


More Than We Were Made To Be

by Shadaras



Series: More Than Our Makers Intended [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU -- Rey isn't the one who fetched Luke back, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Clones, F/F, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Mentor/Protégé, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Screw Destiny, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-16 01:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5807464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Resistance's medical records tell Rey who her closest genetic relative is, and the datafiles tell her about the legacy attached to that name.</p><p>Choosing Rey over the First Order left Finn unable to walk, but he's finally healed enough to regain his footing — and his ability to fight, if he wants it.</p><p>Kylo Ren finds his family, but is sadly uninterested in a family reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hyperspace was even more beautiful from the cockpit of a snubfighter than from the Falcon’s cockpit, Rey thought. It was closer, and if she were foolish enough to open the cockpit, she could reach out and touch it. She rolled her shoulders and glanced at the countdown on her HUD; just over a minute left until they were going to drop out of hyperspace. _Relax_ , she told herself, settling her hands on the controls and checking that everything was still green. _You’ve done this a thousand times._

She hadn’t been flying with a real squadron any of those times, though. A thousand solo sim runs couldn’t make up for her lack of experience flying in formation with real people, the way the rest of Blue Squadron had. Some of the other recruits were new to flying in the full group too, but she’d talked to them over the past week as the final selections came through, and they’d all practiced in groups before the call for recruits came in. It wasn’t hard, exactly, group flying; just less predictable than programs.

The timer clicked down to the last seconds, and Rey kept her eyes on space. The astromech that had come along with her X-Wing, R6-Z4, would drop her out of hyperspace at the right time; her job was to react to whatever was waiting for her. Hopefully there wouldn’t be anything. If this were a real mission, there might _not_ be. But since this was the first full-squadron sim that Captain Drayson was having them run, she was pretty certain that something would be there for them to deal with.

Blue-white lines thinned, dimmed, and then shrunk into stable dots of stars. One Flight, the captain’s group -- where Jess flew as Blue Three -- was in front of her. Her own wingmate -- Blue Five, Tara Sarkin -- hovered between them, and Captain Drayson’s voice sounded over the comm: “Blue Squadron, sound off.”

There wasn’t anything obviously in space other than Blue Squadron. Rey swore to herself, and tapped a request to her astromech, asking to extend her sensors. There had to be something around -- why else would they be here? “Blue Six, ready and waiting,” she said, as the call came to her. Still no other ships, though the data spread said that there was a planetoid relative-down from where they were, marked as HB-563a.

Then Z4 squealed, [Long-range sensors indicate activity on the underside of HB-453a. Unclear readings.]

Rey waited until the click signaling the end of Blue Twelve’s transmission came through, then tapped her comm. “Blue Six here, I’m catching some activity under the planetoid. Hard to tell what it is, but it’s more than just noise.”

“One here. Good eyes, Six.” Captain Drayson was curt, but that seemed normal enough. “Blue Squadron, we’re heading down to check it out. Maintain formation. Keep S-foils in flight position for now.”

Rey double-tapped her comm in acknowledgement, and gently steered her X-wing behind Tara’s. The joystick moved smoothly under her hand, and Rey took a deep breath, calming herself. Now wasn’t the time for jitters. The planetoid grew in front of them, rocky gray in the dim starlight. Some loose debris, rock and ice, spun lazily around it; nothing that was going to be a problem for them, especially since Rey was certain that by the time they got close enough for it to matter, they were going to have their shields up.

“One, I’ve got contact.” Two’s crisp, perfect enunciation was easy to recognise. “Multiple signals, TIEs, clearing the horizon.”

“Copy, Two. S-foils to attack position, shields up. Don’t break formation yet; wait until we have a count.”

Rey let out a long breath and pressed the button that would open up her S-foils. It was just her imagination that she could feel the mechanics as they slid open, she knew, but that wasn’t important right now. Z4 marked up her viewscreen with translucent H-shaped markers representing TIE fighters; they were tiny right now, being so far away that they were just registering on sensors. As the squadron flew closer, the makers enlarged, and firmed up: standard TIE fighters, not interceptors or twofers.

Twelve fighters came on screen, and they were heading straight for them. “Come on,” Rey muttered to herself; her comm was off, so nobody would hear her as she kept her hands steady and didn’t increase speed. “What are you waiting for?”

The captain’s voice came across the comm then, loud and clear. “Close to 10 klicks, then split by pairs and engage at will.”

Confirmation sounds echoed through the comms, and Rey kept an eye on her wingmate and her rangefinder as it clicked down. As soon as it hit 10 klicks, the squadron bloomed out, experienced pair leaders swinging up down and to the sides, encircling the TIEs. Rey followed Tara out to the right and slightly above the TIEs, their speed increasing just as the rest of the squadron did. The view on her HUD was glorious, showing exactly how smoothly everyone -- even the new pilots -- followed the pattern.

Then they turned in, and twelve X-wings flew straight towards the cluster of TIEs, who had apparently decided that their best bet for survival was to use their superior speed and get slightly in front of the X-wings. Probably wanted to foul them somehow. Rey grinned as she and Tara dove in, lightly shifting her joystick until her targeting computer sang a pure tone and she could fire her currently quad-linked lasers at one of the TIEs. It wasn’t as clean a shot as she’d wanted; they were near the edge of an X-wing’s range when she fired, but from the way the TIE spun out of alignment, she knew she’d tagged its wing.

“Nice shot!” Tara called, over what Z4 told her was a private channel.

“Thanks,” Rey said, and then pulled up to follow Tara’s flattening arc towards what was starting to be the engines that gave TIE fighters their names. She settled her laser sights on another TIE, but before she could fire, it blew up from someone else’s fire. She shifted her focus, and managed to tag another TIE before the shieldless craft realised their mistake and started spinning to face the X-wings.

Unfortunately for the TIEs, their paired lasers splashed against X-wing shields even if they hit, which only some of them did. In the head-to-head run, Rey saw the rest of the TIE fighters fall, one by one, to fire. She was pretty sure she’d at least helped with one of those, but it was hard to tell when so many people had such nice shots lined up.

“Blue Squad, turn and follow that survivor; let’s see where it runs to.”

Rey broke left with Tara, and the squadron reformed behind the lone TIE. It was clearly aware of the sheer number of laser cannons pointedly not aimed at it right then, and Rey was pretty certain it was putting all its power into speed. That just meant it was lengthening its distance, not that it was escaping them around the curve of the planetoid.

As they came closer, the TIE fighter dove down to the surface, aiming at something Rey couldn’t quite make out. Captain Drayson had them follow, everyone tucked in nice and neat. “There’s a base there,” she said over the comms. “Something for the TIEs to launch from. Watch for turbolasers.”

When they closed, sensor data informed them that the warning about turbolasers wasn’t necessary. The TIE fighter had spun around an old corvette, which was pulling off the planetoid as the X-wings came in. “Disable, don’t kill,” Drayson said. “We want a prize for the Resistance. Break by flights. Two flight, get the shields. Three flight, take the engines. One flight, we’re watching for any other surprises.”

“Two flight copies,” Tara said, and she led Rey and Blue Seven and Eight down faster, blazing towards the corvette. “Six and I will fire torps first, on my mark. Seven and Eight, fire at three past mark.”

Z4 burbled at her, [The shield generator on that corvette is located topside, slightly stern of the midline.]

“Thanks,” Rey breathed, as the generator lit up gold in her viewfinder. She carefully brought it into sights, then switched to proton torpedoes. They closed the distance, and Rey waited, finger hovering over the trigger as she kept the generator firmly targeted.

“Mark.”

Rey saw her torpedoes streak forward, following just behind Tara’s. She pulled up with her wingmate, and then spun so that she could keep watching the corvette. Another set of torpedoes followed, and then Blue Seven and Eight pulled up to join them. The first torpedoes hit, three intentionally calm breaths later, and the shields flickered, then fell as the delayed torps shot through the weakened shield and struck the generator.

“Shields down,” Tara said. “Three flight, it’s all you.”

“Nine here. Thanks, Five.”

Rey recognized Snap’s voice, even if she hadn’t yet memorized who everyone was; she knew the callsigns, and she knew everyone’s faces outside the cockpits, but in the air she couldn’t always keep track of who flew which position. Jess told her that was okay, she wouldn’t be expected to have it down for at least a week, but it felt like a personal failure, when she’d met and tentatively become acquainted with or friends to so many of them.

Three flight took down the engines with just a few careful torpedoes, and then Captain Drayson contacted the corvette itself. Rey didn’t really pay attention to the exchange. It wasn’t particularly important, at this point. She kept her X-wing flying in slow circles around the corvette, following Tara. Soon enough, Drayson came over the comms again. “Good work, Blue Squadron. Mission complete.”

The screen in front of Rey’s face darkened, and the sim pod hissed as the cockpit opened automatically. Rey leaned back, blinking against the sudden influx of light. The room taken over by sim pods was far brighter than the sim space had been. Around her, she heard her new squadmates climbing out of their pods, and as her eyes adjusted, she supposed she should join them. Rey undid the straps holding her in place, pulled off her helmet, dropped it beside her, and then stood and jumped lightly out of her cockpit.

Tara came over next to her, and said, “Nice flying.”

Rey grinned at the petite woman. “Thanks.”

“Just don’t get cocky.” Tara swung around and leaned on the nose of one of the pods. “I think the captain’s gonna make a speech at us.”

Rey followed her wingmate’s gaze to where Captain Badhiri Drayson stood in her sim pod, which had the effect of making her taller than everyone else. Her dark skin went far better with the orange flightsuit than Rey personally thought was fair, and the elaborate braids of her hair didn’t get messed up by the helmet, either.

“One run down,” Captain Badhiri said, and the soft chatter silenced. “But that was a milk run and you know it. Now that you’re all sure you remember what your callsigns are, we’re going to do something a little more complex next time.” She looked around, and then grinned. “Good job. Same time tomorrow.”

The chorus of ‘Yes, sir’s was ragged, and Rey could definitely hear one or two people say something that sounded a lot more like “Yeah, okay” instead, but if the captain heard, she didn’t say anything, just hopped out of her pod and onto the ground, where she blended in with everyone else. Rey let out a breath and turned towards Jess’ sim pod, waving a farewell at Tara as she left. The smaller woman just grinned at her and flapped a hand in return, and Rey managed not to blush. She hadn’t gotten into the squad because she was dating Jess, and everyone knew it, even though they teased her anyway.

Jess saw her coming, and straightened from where she leaned against a wall. “Hey, hotshot,” she said.

“Hotshot?” Rey raised her eyebrows. “You sure you’re not talking about yourself?”

“Nah.” Jess tugged at the lowest of Rey’s buns. “Pretty sure that’s you. Nice shooting, especially at range like that. Once you adjust to the computers, you’ll be great.”

This time, Rey did blush. “Thanks,” she said. She captured Jess’ hand and tangled their fingers together. “Do you have plans for later?”

Jess shrugged. “I’ve got work shifts between lunch and dinner. After that, though?” She grinned, and leaned forward to kiss Rey. “I’ve got time after dinner.”

Rey smiled, and fit herself in next to Jess by the wall. “I’ll find you at dinner, then.”

“Practicing those Jedi senses of yours?” Jess tugged Rey towards the door. “That’s got to be the best way to find anyone in there, when it’s busy.”

“It’’s a lot more fun than some of my assignments, at least. I’ve got a nice reward at the end.” She squeezed Jess’ hand. She still might not really understand what people meant about romantic attraction, but what she had with Jess -- and with Finn -- was nice, and it made her happy, and Jess kept assuring her that so long as she was happy, it was okay.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Poe said as they passed out of the door. Rey spun and almost punched him, before realising that, first of all, she was on the Resistance base and therefore safe; and secondly, it was Poe, and she did like Poe enough not to punch him without reason.

Jess wrapped her arm around Rey’s waist, since she’d pulled her hand away. “You know better,” she said to Poe.

Rey nodded, and leaned into her girlfriend, calming herself from the adrenaline surge.

“Yeah. Sorry.” Poe ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it even further. “Medical asked me to fetch Rey. I think partially so I’d stop hanging around distracting Finn.”

Rey stiffened. “Did they say why?”

“Something about wanting to check some results, but it wasn’t anything to be worried about.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really ask. It’s your records, and unless it impacts your ability to function, I don’t get to pull rank and see them without you saying I can.”

“Ah.” Rey relaxed slightly. Jess’ warmth at her side helped with that. “Okay.”

Poe fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Want company as you see what they want?”

“What are they doing with Finn that’s got you so worked up?” Jess asked, as Rey nodded and they started walking down the halls.

“He’s got physical therapy, and they’re starting on balance and walking again now.” Poe shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’s... trying.”

“You wouldn’t be so upset if you didn’t watch.” Rey uncurled Jess’ hand from her waist and took it in hers again. It was still strange, how much physical contact she could have with people now, but it was nice, too. “There’s a _reason_ the medics discourage that.”

Poe shrugged. “Finn says it’s okay.”

“Finn loves you,” Rey said tartly. “And so long as you aren’t this bad while he’s actually doing things, I’m sure it really is fine, and I bet that it contributes to all your snuggliness somehow.”

“I’ve got to help him stretch his scars out _somehow_ ,” Poe says, completely unrepentant. “You know, since they won’t let me help with his official physical therapy stuff.”

Jess’ laugh rang through the halls. “How much clothing does this stretching entail?”

“Oh, you know, he needs to take his shirt off...”

Rey shook her head, but she was grinning anyway. She pushed through the door to the medical bay, into the waiting area. The med droid standing there looked between them and shook its head. “Commander Dameron. Doctor Kalonia requests that you wait here.”

“I bet she used those exact words,” Jess whispered into Rey’s ear, and she stifled a giggle.

Poe sighed dramatically and flopped down on a cushioned chair. “If I must.”

The droid turned its softly glowing eyes to Rey and said, “Rey, would you like Jessika to accompany you?”

Rey nodded.

“Very well. Follow me, please.” It turned back to Poe at the door and added, “Not you.”

Poe only huffed a little.

Inside the medical chambers, the droid led Rey and Jess to the lab. “There’s a slight anomaly in the results of your complete physical,” it said as they walked. “Nothing that will have a negative effect on you; simply something that we need to run a second comparison on to confirm the results.”

Rey nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

The droid ushered them into the lab, and sat Rey down on a stool. “This will sting slightly,” it said, flipping two of its fingers so that it had a spray and a needle instead of fingers. The spray itself was cool against Rey’s left shoulder, which the droid bared with its other hand. The needle, as warned, stung slightly.

She rubbed her shoulder, once the droid had finished, and asked, “How long until you confirm whatever those result are?”

“Just a few minutes,” it assured her. “We’re simply running a comparison, so it’s much shorter than the full examination was.”

“Should we wait here, or out there with Poe?”

The droid paused. “Whichever you prefer, Rey.”

“Here’s fine, then.” Rey reached out a hand to Jess, who moved up behind her, quiet and patient. “I’m curious.”

“While you’re waiting, I am pleased to inform you that you have no known diseases, infections, or parasites. You were given a full round of early childhood vaccines, it appears, and they worked very well for you. You’re in wonderful shape, unsurprisingly. While you have scars, none of them impact your lifestyle. The only matter that we were unclear about--” it paused, eye-lights dimming briefly “--has just been clarified.”

“And that was?” Jess asked, when the droid hadn’t said anything immediately and Rey couldn’t bring herself to speak.

The droid’s voice sounded more monotone and computerised than usual, somehow. “An analysis of your genetic structure, when modified to account for your different childhood environments and their effects on gene expression, show that you are a 99.999% match for Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, also called Ben Kenobi. This match is closer than genetic descent allows for, save in cases of cloning.”

Silence, save for the quiet hum of electronics, filled the room.

Rey stared at the droid. She’d spent all of her childhood trying to hold on to her memories of her parents, and even if she’d lost many of them in the sands of Jakku, she _knew_ that they had been good to her. “I am not a clone,” she said. Whispered, really. She couldn’t get her voice to be any louder.

“Rey...” Jess’ hand tightened on hers.

It was close, but she didn’t shake Jess off. “How can you be so _sure_?” she demanded, standing and drawing herself to her full height, just barely taller than the droid.

The droid gazed peacefully back at her. “Our records contain both Old Republic and Imperial files,” it said. “Master Obi-Wan’s biosignature is well-represented in both.”

“And this?” Rey pulled her hand away from Jess’ to cup both of hers under her breasts. “I’ve seen some holos of him. He didn’t have these.”

“He had external modifications of his hormonal balances when he was eight.” The droid shrugged. It’s programming, Rey had to admit, was quite sophisticated. “You did not.”

Rey sat down, abruptly, and buried her head in her hands. “Who else have you told?”

“High-level medical staff is aware, such as Doctor Kalonia. The information is sealed within your file, and has not been released yet, as it was not confirmed until you joined us here.”

“ _Sithspit_.”

Jess lightly touched her shoulder, and Rey reached up to grab her hand. Gently, Jess said, “I won’t tell anyone unless you say I can.”

Rey squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”

“Is there anyone you would like us to release the information to at this time?” the droid asked.

“Can I--” Rey swallowed. “Can I have a copy of the information? A locked copy, so that only I can open it? I want to show Leia, but--” There were tears prickling at her eyes. “I think I should do that myself.”

“I understand.” The droid’s voice softened. “I will return with a secure datapad shortly.”

“Thank you,” Rey whispered, clinging to Jess’ hand.

If the records were telling the truth -- and the medical staff had no reason to lie -- then she didn’t just have a last name that someone could find. She had a legacy to live up to, and that was more frightening than she ever would have imagined.

_Did Leia ever feel like this?_ she wondered, as Jess rubbed circles into the tight muscles of her back. _Did Ben?_


	2. Chapter 2

Rey had forgotten about Poe until she left the medical rooms and found him sprawled in the waiting area, working on his datapad. She clutched the slender locked pad the med droid had given her in one hand and Jess’ hand in the other, and turned away from Poe almost as soon as she saw him.

Poe had seem something in her face, though, from how strong and soft his voice was. “Rey? Are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly healthy. I passed all the tests.” Rey kept walking, looking down at the floor in front of her feet, just enough to not run into anything.

She heard an intake of breath and shifting fabric from Poe, and then Jess said, “They told her some things about her heritage.”

Rey nodded, and rocked into Jess. That was okay. She could tell people that and they’d think they understood what was going through her head, and that was fine with her.

Poe spoke again as she reached the door and pulled her hand from Jess’ to open it. “If you want to talk...”

“I know.” Rey looked up and managed a smile for him, earnest as he was. “It’ll be a while until I want to.”

“Okay.” He smiled back, all warmth and sunlight, and Rey escaped into the hallways that always managed to smell of earth no matter how clean they were.

Jess followed her, and laid a hand on her shoulder as she turned down the hall. “I should go, I’ve got work. Will you be okay?”

Rey swallowed, and turned to bury her face in Jess’ neck. She breathed in the scent of her girlfriend; metal and sweat and the subtle herbs in her shampoo that Rey still didn’t know the names of. Jess wrapped her up in a tight hug, and waited. After a few long, slow breaths, Rey said, her voice muffled by Jess’ skin, “I can find you if I need you. I think I’ll be okay.”

Jess kissed her ear. “I hope your talk with the General goes well.”

“Yeah.” Rey pulled back from Jess’ embrace and managed almost a real smile. “Probably it will.”

Jess tugged her forward for another kiss, this time on the lips, before letting her go. Rey watched her walk down the hall, her stride far more purposeful and strong than Rey thought she could manage just then. But that was okay. Really, it was. She didn’t need to be strong, or project strength to defend herself; nobody on base was out to get her, no matter what her Jakku-trained instincts said.

Putting off talking to General Leia wouldn’t help anything, though. Rey held tighter to the datapad and walked down the hall, towards first the open air, and then, from there, the command center. As she emerged into the sunlight, she had pause for a moment, letting her eyes adjust from the dimmer halls. The sky was a pure and cloudless blue, but the shade was wrong: darker and more intense than it would’ve been on Jakku. Her need to blink her eyes was just because of the light, Rey told herself as she continued on.

She waved at a few of the people she passed; they all seemed to be on errands of their own, just like she was. Rey wished, sometimes, for the quiet after the storm of Starkiller Base. Free time had been a given, then, not a luxury as it was now, with the reduced Resistance presence on base. The sunlight warm on her face was the same, though, and it didn’t beat upon her skin as harshly as on Jakku. There was moisture in the air, too. She’d gotten used to such small changes more quickly than she ever would have guessed, dreaming of the places Captain Ræh had visited before being felled and joining the Graveyard of Giants.

Rey took one last breath of open air before entering the command building and descending to the protected levels of Leia’s comm center. Especially now that they were in the middle of moving bases, she was almost always there -- and if she wasn’t, someone would be able to tell her where the general was. Normally she’d use her uncertainty as a test of her growing control over the Force, but right now her mind felt almost as shaky as her speeder, the first time she’d gotten it useable; not quite about to fall apart, but definitely capable of it if pushed too hard.

When Rey entered the central command area, it was immediately obvious where Leia was. Everyone else was perfectly silent, and Leia was saying, in a very level -- but loud -- voice, “--don’t _care_.”

“Ma’am -- General -- our own resources are strained with recovery efforts from the attack and destruction of Hosnian Prime.” A uniformed man stood in a holo, his salt-and-pepper hair ruffled. He sounded like he was just as close to shouting as Leia was. “You _know_ that.”

Rey edged in next to one of the comm techs. “Who is that?”

“Wedge Antilles,” they whispered back.

Leia leaned forward, stabbing at Antilles’ holo with one stiff finger. “You fed us scraps because the Republic didn’t want another galactic conflict.” Her voice tightened. “The First Order doesn’t give a _shit_ about the Galactic Concordance. Do you believe us now?”

“Just because I believe you doesn’t mean I can give you anything more, Leia.” Antilles rubbed at his face. “Councillor Fey’lya is many things, but impulsive is... not one of them.”

“I almost wish that bastard had been on Hosnian Prime.”

“Leia...”

“I know, I know.” She raised a hand, head bowed. “Almost.”

“I can’t give you what you want, Leia.” He sighed, and slouched a little, emphasising the wrinkles in his New Republic uniform. “You have a new base. Don’t tell me where it is. I don’t trust our codes anymore.”

“I’ll contact you again when I can.”

Antilles smiled. “May the Force be with you, General.”

“And with you, Commander.”

The holo faded out of existence, and everyone in the command center made a sudden effort to look busy. Leia stayed where she was, leaning against the holo projector, and Rey -- without meaning to, without particularly trying -- felt a surge of tiredness and sorrow wash across her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, settling herself into the earth that encased them, reminding herself that she was in _her_ body, and didn’t need to feel any emotions but her own -- and her own were complex enough as it was.

When she opened her eyes, Leia was standing in front of her, arms folded. Rey took a step back automatically, and said, “I-- Leia--”

She raised her eyebrows. “You have something you want to talk about.”

“Um. Yes.” Rey looked down, trying to avoid hunching her shoulders. “Can we go somewhere private?”

“Of course. This way.” Leia reached out a hand and gently set it on Rey’s arm, guiding her through the sparsely populated command center and into one of the side rooms that, Rey was fairly certain, was usually where conversations like the one Leia had been having with Commander Antilles happened.

Once they were inside, Rey sat down on a filing cabinet and said, “I really don’t know how to say this.”

Leia stayed standing, so their faces were at about the same height. “Can you show me?” she asked, nodding at the datapad Rey still held.

“Medical gave this to me.” Rey pressed her thumb against the pad to unlock it, and then held it out.

Leia took the datapad and scrolled through it. “I’m not sure I’m seeing--”

Rey winced into the sudden silence. She looked up at Leia through her eyelashes, not wanting to admit how curious she was about her mentor’s expression. It was rather frozen, set in a way that Rey had learned was from her lifetime’s training as a politician, rather than her current position as a military leader.

“That is... unexpected,” Leia said at last, her voice quiet and gentle and cracked.

“Yeah.”

“They’re sure?”

Rey tried to relax her fingers. Her nails were biting into her palms, and that wasn’t good. “Yes.”

“What stories have you heard about Obi-Wan?”

This time Rey actually looked up, startled. Leia still had the datapad, but she wasn’t looking at it anymore. She leaned against the wall, for once showing her age and the weight that rested upon her. Rey swallowed, and said, “Not much. Scavengers weren’t big on Jedi stories. Um.” She wrapped her arms around herself, telling herself that digging her fingers into her body wasn’t really that helpful. “He was a general in the Clone Wars. He trained Anakin Skywalker and began Luke Skywalker’s training. You sent him a message when you were captured by the Empire.” She shrugged. “Not much detail, but some holos. I don’t look like him.”

“The Empire destroyed many non-essential records in the Jedi Temple.” Leia shifted, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “That included holos of Obi-Wan from before the Clone Wars. It’s hard to say if you would’ve looked like him when he was your age.”

Rey shrugged again.

Leia stepped forward, slowly, and settled a hand on Rey’s shoulder. It was warm, and solid, and her grip was strong. “Rey, I know it’s a shock to you. I wish we knew more about your life before Jakku.”

“A _clone_ ,” she whispered. “My parents -- I remember that they loved me.”

“Perhaps they didn’t know either.”

She just curled into herself -- into Leia -- more.

Leia wrapped an arm around Rey, hugging her close. “Ackbar knew Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars.” Her voice buzzed into Rey’s bones where she pressed against Leia’s chest. “I expect that you’re limiting knowledge of this information?”

Rey nodded.

“You may want to ask Ackbar. Chewie, also.” Leia’s voice softened. “I received a message from him earlier today. Luke has finally agreed to come back with them.”

“Really?” Rey sat up. Her skin felt like it was singing. “That’s great!”

Leia smiled. “It will take some time for them to arrive; they’re not taking a direct route here. Chewie says that within a week they should land.”

“I was worried they’d never come.”

“Luke is... just as stubborn as I am.” Something flashed across Leia’s face, too quick for Rey to follow. “As we all are, really. But if he’s made this decision, he’ll stick to it -- just as he stuck to his forsaken hermitage.”

Rey relaxed her hands and reached out to the datapad. “It’s locked to me.”

“A useful precaution.” Leia surrendered it easily. “If you want to continue discussing that matter...”

“I know.” Rey smiled, quick and tight. “I want to think about it more. Outside.”

“Then I shall see you tomorrow, for training.”

Rey nodded, and left, before her nervous energy returned to the desire to claw at her arms, her ribs, her neck -- not helpful, not productive, but sometimes the only thing she could do. It wasn’t safe to fly when everything was screaming, as badly as she wanted to, because the air was freedom and escape from the ties of the earth. She walked out of the command center, out of the earthen tunnels, until she could breathe again, and then turned, only half sure of what she was doing, towards the rivers.

Her feet knew the path even if her mind was mostly focused on clutching the datapad to her chest and not breaking into a run where people could still see her. As soon as she cleared the outskirts of the base, Rey stretched out her legs and let her feet press hard against the solid earth. The sensation was so different, on soil rather than sand, no matter how hard the sand was packed; her toes didn’t dig in, she just rebounded and kept moving, not needing to account for the flow of dunes beneath her weight.

She didn’t stop until she reached the lake where she’d first met Jess. She hadn’t exactly been aiming for it, but it was a good destination; nobody was here right now, and as strange as water was, Jess had taught her that sometimes it means freedom in the same way that the sky did. Carefully, with slow, sure movements, Rey set down the datapad and stripped: The regulation shirt, with sleeves that covered her shoulders and upper arms. The regulation trousers, made of thick canvas that didn’t catch or rip without serious effort, and which was belted around her waist. The non-regulation shoes, because she had refused to give up her own, which were molded exactly to her liking. The wraps around her arms that covered them, armpit to wrist, and meant that nobody had to see the pockmarks and scars that she and her world had left.

Naked, her body bared to the world, Rey walked into the lake. Water coiled around her, chill though the air was not, and Rey shivered, skin raising into tiny bumps like that would help hold warmth. She didn’t stop walking. The water encompassed her legs, her hips, her ribs, her breasts, until Rey finally just dropped her whole body underneath the surface, the shock of cold water almost a blessing upon her face, because she could finally think about that and nothing else.

Fully soaked now, hair sticking to her cheeks and neck, Rey swam out into the lake with slow, deliberate strokes, just the way Jess had taught her. The motion was soothing; repetitive, but still new enough that she had to think about it to complete it properly. Her muscles warmed as she kept moving, arms stretching to the sky and then diving into the water, legs kicking in rote motion, until at last Rey flipped over onto her back and stared up at the slowly drifting clouds overhead.

She floated there, feeling herself sink in and out of the water ever so slightly as she breathed, little waves lapping over her skin like kisses. The air, though warmer than the water, was still chilly to her wet body, and Rey was glad for that. The sensation was good; something to attend to, but something that was safe.

“I’m not going to be him,” she told the sky. She lifted one arm from the lake, ran a hand over her curves: collarbone to breast, along the muscles of her core to her hips, down the side of her leg. Scarred and strong and not shaped like those holos of ‘perfect female humans’ that she’d seen some other scavengers treasure.

“I don’t need to care about him.” She raised her hand, let her eyes drift along the scars that meandered, variously faded, along the work-carved lines.

“I will not let this change me,” Rey promised the clouds, letting her arm splash back into the lake. “Whatever reason someone had for making me, they didn’t raise me. You hear that?”

She raised her voice, shouted up to the empty sky. “I am of my own making, now!”

And if tears ran down her cheeks, there was enough water around her that nobody would be able to tell; and if her body shook, it was just because of the lake’s chill; and if her voice cracked and broke, there was nobody to hear but the wind.


	3. Chapter 3

Physical therapy did work, Finn had to acknowledge, but it left him aching and tired. He grinned at Dr. Kalonia. “Poe keeps saying that he’ll teach me to dance, once I can trust my feet.”

“Does he?” She shook her head, and kept entering information on her datapad. “What sort of dancing does he have in mind?”

“No idea,” Finn said cheerfully. “Something fun, I assume.”

Kalonia laughed. “His idea of fun dancing, to my understanding, comes in two forms.” She raised one finger, and then another as she said, “Lovely slow partner dances, and grinding at bars, which barely counts as dancing.”

Finn rested his chin on a closed fist and contemplated that. “I think he means the first one.”

“I would expect so.” She set down her datapad and faced him fully. “You can say this along with me, I think, but--”

“Take it easy, keep doing my stretches, and take painkillers if you need them,” Finn finished along with her. “Yeah, I know.”

“You’re a good patient,” Kalonia said, smiling. “Now go and take your boyfriend away before he starts causing more trouble.”

Finn snickered and saluted, enjoying that it was only a little achey to raise his right hand to his forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a salute just as flippant as his tone had been.

Finn turned his chair and let it carry him out of the medical wing. Poe was, as he’d half-predicted, lounging on one of the couches. He had his datapad set up to project a holoscreen above his head, so that he only had to reach up to tap at imaginary buttons to scroll through his work. Finn paused in the door, just looking at the relaxation in Poe’s body; so normal for him, and so completely different, still, from what Finn expected from officers doing admin work.

He maneuvered forward, bringing his chair up next to the couch Poe was on in a soft hum of repulsor tech. Poe looked up and smiled, crinkling the edges of his eyes. “Finn! The good doctor’s released you from her clutches once more?”

“Yeah, physical therapy’s over for the day.” Finn reached out and ran his hand through Poe’s thick hair. “Where’s Rey? You said you were going to find her for something.”

“Um.” Poe deactivated his datapad and sat up. “Somewhere? Medical wanted to confirm something, and they wouldn’t let me in -- they let _Jess_ in with her, though -- and then when she came out she looked...” He paused, tapping a finger on his lips. Finn didn’t think he was aware of how distracting that habit was; tapping his lips, biting them, twisting them up to showcase his dramatizations of emotion -- Poe’s mouth was so expressive, and sometimes Finn forgot to look at the rest of his boyfriend’s face because of that. He pointedly pulled his focus back to Poe’s eyes, though, as Poe finished his sentence. “Shocked, I guess? They told her something about her heritage, Jess said.”

Finn looked down at where his hands lay resting, still and formal, on his lap. He turned them palm-up, and Poe settled his own hand in them. “Where do you think she went?” he asked quietly. “To think about that?”

“You know her hiding spots better than I do.”

“Well, you know if Jess is on duty again...” Finn circled the calluses on Poe’s fingers delicately. The ones on his own hands were starting to fade, and he wasn’t sure what he thought of that; he hadn’t handled a weapon since Starkiller Base, and it was eerie, but it was also almost pleasant.

“I think she is.”

“Okay.” He glanced up. Poe’s face was soft, except for tension that pulled his lips into a line and not the curve Finn expected from him. “She didn’t want to talk to you, did she.”

He shook his head, raked his hair out of his eyes. “I offered.”

“I’ll ask again when I find her.” Finn squeezed Poe’s hand. “I’ll try comming her, but she’s bad enough at noticing that normally.”

Poe grinned. “You’re so offended by that.”

“Regulations state--” Finn began, before Poe started giggling and Finn had to crack a smile too. “Your safety regulations,” he informed Poe, letting his voice turn haughty as General Hux’s often was, “are not up to standards. Why, I happen to know that you sometimes turn your comm unit off for _hours_ while partaking in recreational activities.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Poe wiggled his eyebrows and carefully ran his tongue along his lips. “If I didn’t, I’d never get more than half an hour of recreation.”

Finn ducked his head, fighting to keep a properly straight face.

“Besides,” Poe added, more seriously, “if there was an emergency, communications would override the silence setting, or someone would come bang on my door, or something like that.”

“Okay.” Tension that Finn hadn’t even realised had gathered in his shoulders started ebbing out. Finn rolled them, savouring the gentle ache of muscles and the mild tension of his scar. It was so much better than it had been. “Thank you.”

Poe leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Finn smiled at him. “You’ve got work to do.”

“And you’ve got a friend to find.” Poe stood, grabbing his datapad with his free hand. “I’ll walk with you until we get outside, but I’ve got to head through Command, and that’s definitely not where Rey is.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Finn backed his chair up and turned it, keeping hold of Poe’s hand. “She’ll be outside somewhere; it’s just about where.”

Poe opened the door into the main halls for him, and it hissed closed behind them. “The Force will guide you to her, no doubt.”

“If she’s not hiding herself with it.”

“Doesn’t that require control?”

Finn looked up at Poe, raising an eyebrow. “You think she doesn’t have control, just because she’s got a lot to think about right now?”

“Okay, yeah.”

Finn rubbed his thumb along Poe’s. “She’ll be okay,” he said.

Poe sighed. “I know.”

They walked in silence through the halls and up to the surface again. In the bright sunlight, Poe leaned down and kissed Finn, those lovely lips soft and strong on Finn’s own. When Poe started straightening again, Finn reached up and pulled him in for just a little longer, not wanting to lose the delicious sensation.

But then Poe tried a little harder, and Finn let go, smiling up at his boyfriend. Poe grinned back, and said, very quietly, “Later, okay?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” A swirl of emotions made physical ran through Finn’s torso at the promise, electric and warm, coalescing in his breastbone and the bit of his stomach.

He didn’t reach out as Poe turned and walked away, back straight and stride almost bouncing, though he wanted to. Instead, he pointedly turned his chair and went to search the gardens. Finn didn’t think Rey would be there, if she really was unsettled and wanted to get away from everyone to think. Just because he liked being around people and busy when upset didn’t mean she would; she was pricklier, warier than he was. Growing things helped, though, as did the thankfully-shining sun.

The gardens were beautiful and empty of all but a handful of gardeners, none of whom had seen Rey. One thought ze had seen her walking off base to the north, where a forest encompassing a river and lake lay, but couldn’t tell him how long ago that had been. Finn thanked zir for the information anyway, and ze gave him zir blessing.

Finn approached the woods carefully. Rationally, he understood that repulsor tech had no problems with rough terrain like undergrowth. Rationally, he knew that he’d been on speeders going through woods just like this as part of his survival training. Rationally, he knew that his chair worked just as well as the larger speeders that he and everyone else in the galaxy trusted implicitly. Rationally, he knew that there was no reason for him to be so worried about going into the woods.

He still didn’t like it.

He’d followed Rey along this path once before, though, when she’d wanted to show him that she’d learned to swim. She’d looked so comfortable in the water, and Jess’ smile at her girlfriend had been brilliant. Now, navigating the path on his own, Finn wished he’d paid a little more attention to the route. It was a foot trail, and easy enough for Rey to find and follow; she was nimble and sharp-eyed, and it was fairly flat. But it was also barely wide enough for his chair, as sleek as it was, and even though the soil was generally fairly damp instead of dusty, the repulsorlifts blew up stray leaves and bits of branches, making it even slower going if he wanted to be careful and safe and sure of his path.

Finn was sweating, just a little, by the time he got to the edge of the lake. The path let him out right where he had expected it to, and a tight ball of pride flared in his chest. He could still follow a trail only seen once. He wasn’t losing all his skills. Now, with no trees and fewer bushes, he could move more quickly, turning left and following the curve of the lake towards the broader span of grass he remembered Rey using as a staging ground last time he had come here.

He saw Rey’s clothes before he saw Rey. They were piled very neatly on a moss-covered rock two meters from the edge of the water. Finn headed towards them, trying to ignore the concern growing in the pit of his stomach and the ridge of his shoulders. Rey had to be around somewhere; they were clearly set aside for her whenever she came back. And she wasn’t body-shy, exactly; she’d stripped without thinking, when he and she and Jess had been here, body lithe and golden and covered with scars that her grace refused them permission to ask about.

So he rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the muscles there, and stopped his chair next to the clothes. She was almost certainly in the water, then. That made sense. Water was life, she’d told him once, no sentiment at all in her voice. He’d needed to hold back the scientific facts drilled into him when he was young and still being tested for specialist ability, before he’d been sent into stormtrooper training. Even if, later, he’d been told he was tapped for command within the troops, it had still stung, because he’d done so well in every test they’d set him. But Rey didn’t care about the science; she just knew the stories, had watched rain fall and bring flowers to the desert.

Of course she was in the water. If water is life, then water is also healing. Finn stared out across the water, slowing his breathing as he watched the ripples of wind flutter across the surface. It wasn’t large enough for natural waves, and the air was too still to generate its own. He couldn’t see Rey, but that didn’t mean much. She’d swum out far enough that he had only found her knowing where she’d gone, last time. She would see him here, waiting for her. And he could keep watch for any other interlopers while he did. And, he admitted to himself, that little quiet wonder blossoming again, he could simply _be_ and enjoy the sunlight and the smell of water and earth and greenery.

It was almost ten minutes before he saw her. She was a pale dot on the darker water, steadily growing until he could see the smooth arcs of her arms cutting through the lake. Finn smiled, seeing her, and the last little bits of worry he’d been attempting to smother dissipated entirely. She was moving well, and heading straight towards him. He shifted his chair sideways and back, just a little, making sure that there would be an easy track for her from the lake to her clothes and he wouldn’t get in the way.

When Rey got to the shallows at the edge of the lake, she didn’t come out, though. She just sat there, torso and legs distorted by the water, and looked at him. He could see the tan lines, not quite faded, on her shoulders and neck, and the pinkness of how long she’d undoubtedly been in sun just now. Her hair wrapped around her ears and cheeks, a dark frame for her freckled face, where tension lines were starting to grow.

“Poe said you were upset,” Finn said quietly.

Rey nodded, face still set.

“He said you didn’t want to talk to him, and that it was something about your heritage.” Finn shifted, leaning forward. He could brace himself on his knees with his good arm easily, now. “Look, I’ll leave if you want, but...” He gathered his courage and said, a lot more quickly than he’d meant to, “I’m really glad that you know something, even if it’s complicated.”

She looked down, far enough that he couldn’t see her face. “They said I’m a clone.”

Finn opened his mouth, then closed it, and just stared at her.

“That’s why they have my genetic code in their system.” Her voice thinned. “Do you swear not to tell anyone who?”

“Of course,” Finn said. “I swear not to tell anyone without your permission.”

“General Obi-Wan Kenobi.” She looked up, and Finn couldn’t quite tell if the shininess in them and around them was tears or just water from the lake. “He was a Jedi, a general in the Clone Wars, and one of Luke Skywalker’s mentors.”

Without meaning to, Finn’s eyes flickered down to Rey’s chest, and then back up. He thought he’d caught it soon enough for Rey not to notice, but she grinned and said, rather more cheerfully, “He had hormone replacement therapy when he was a kid, I’m told.”

Finn frowned, trying to sort that out. “I’ve heard of steroids for people needing more strength, or hormones for people whose natural systems were insufficient or failing. I fail to see what that had to do with breasts, or the lack thereof.”

“Before puberty, it can apparently just trick the body.” Rey shrugged, dismissing the topic. “Ask Kalonia about it, she’d be able to explain.”

“I will,” Finn said. He rubbed at his chest, hard muscle and a thin layer of fat starting to form from being so pampered here at D’Qar base. “So you’re a clone, they say.” He spread a hand. “That doesn’t seem like it changes much.”

She stared at him, and shook her head so forcefully he saw water splash around her. “It changes everything. I-- I wasn’t _born_ , I was _made_.”

“I was made too.”

“That’s _different_.”

Finn bit at his lip and leaned back in his chair, sorting out the gut certainty he felt. “The First Order owned my life.” He grimaced. “I chose to reclaim it when I broke Poe out. Someone made your body, maybe, but you made yourself on Jakku, and that body is _yours_ now.”

Rey fidgeted under water with what Finn was pretty sure was a stick. “I guess.”

“This thing doesn’t really do water,” Finn said, trying to keep his tone light. “But I’d love to give you a hug, or maybe just hold your hand.”

“Huh?” She looked up again, and then glanced at her clothes. “Ah.” Without any ceremony or shame, she stood up, body tight and neatly muscled and beautiful. She moved fluidly, and Finn was certain that she didn’t have nearly as good a sense of her own grace as Poe did, making the same motions, with the same level of embodied being. Whatever was going on in her head, it wasn’t breaking her instinctive connection to her body.

She dressed with economical motions, and only stepped next to Finn when she’d finally stuck her feet back in her boots. Quietly, she offered him her hand. Just as silently, he took it.

Her hand was chilly, wrinkled, and rough from the water, but her grip was strong and she was leaning against his chair. Gently, he laced his fingers through hers, and rubbed at the back of her hand and wrist with his other hand, warming it, reassuring her that he was here.

It was good, and peaceful, until a roaring boom sounded in the distance. Finn and Rey looked up in the same moment, and a dark ship crossed the sky near the distant horizon. “That silhouette is wrong for Resistance ships, isn’t it,” Rey said.

“Yeah.” Finn swallowed. “That was a First Order fighter.”

She squeezed his hand. “I think we need to get back to base now.”

Finn nodded, and followed Rey, even more grateful now for her hand in his.


	4. Chapter 4

Resistance scouts found absolutely nothing. Whoever the First Order scout had been, they’d gotten in and out on their own, too fast and small to be caught or tracked past the first quick hyperspace jump to just one system away. Leia’s speech to the Resistance members as evening fell was, Rey thought, just a scrap tossed to everyone as a show: “We can’t do much more than we already are doing,” she’d said, and “We’re doubling patrols.”

Adding more patrols just meant Rey spent more time up in the air with her flight group. That was good, really, even if flying in endless sweeps around D’Qar and neighbouring star systems was boring. The saying that everyone who’d been in the Resistance longer loved quoting at her, that “War is ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent sheer terror” kept seeming more and more accurate, though privately Rey thought that if that was true then they were going to use up their store of boredom more quickly this way than if they ran half as many sweeps. That was how math worked. It wasn’t how safety worked, though.

Her flight leader and wingmate, Tara Sarkin, led them in maneuver exercises while they flew, shaping diamonds and lines and swirls and stars with different people taking lead. It almost made the boredom go away, sometimes; it at least gave Rey something else to focus on than the endless and slowly shifting backdrop of stars.

It wasn’t that she minded the stars. Watching them was peaceful, and a good chance to practice her meditation. Leia told her that she was just as bad as Leia herself had been, when Luke first taught her meditation. “Mind always going everywhere,” she’d said, “caught up in the next meeting, the next plan -- I didn’t find time to settle down and meditate until-- Ben.” Leia had stopped then, and Rey had laid a hand, gently, on hers.

So Rey meditated by watching the stars fly by. Zephyr -- as she’d finally decided to call her astromech -- could tell her if something pinged her X-Wing’s sensors, and Tara would call it if they were going to go back to doing maneuvers. She spread her awareness out over the near-empty space around her X-Wing, opening herself to the presence of her fellow pilots.

Tara was bright and focused in her X-Wing, just ahead of Rey. Beside her flew Blue Seven, a Bothan named Dal Ven’nari, whose energy was quieter, but no less intense for it; and behind them was Blue Eight, the Mon Calamari Vassa Tuira, a diffuse pulse like she often described the ocean as being. The familiarity of them in the Force, and her sense of them being just as bored, helped Rey lose track of time. The occasional murmurs across the comms -- about the weather on Jakku, asses getting sore, and this being the sort of work rich people used droids for -- broke up the monotony a little, but they weren’t doing maneuvers.

Rey frowned, after an hour had passed and Tara hadn’t called any, and gently quested out towards her flight leader with the Force. There was a sense of... of... Rey breathed slow and deep, as Leia had taught her, and focused. Expectation? Waiting? Something like that. But Tara hadn’t mentioned anything to them before starting this patrol, so it was either something incredibly unimportant or something that she’d been told to keep a secret. Either way, not something Rey could ask about.

Zephyr chirruped at her maybe half an hour later, asking if she wanted to play a game to pass the time. Rey smiled at the display where the droid’s words popped up. “No,” she said, “not right now. Thank you.”

Fifteen minutes later, there was a surge in the sensors that meant someone was arriving through hyperspace, and everyone got sharper, more focused. The sense of anticipation in Tara increased, too, Rey noted.

“Look sharp, everyone,” Tara called across the comms. “We’ve got a visitor.”

The hyperspace ripple on their sensors resolved, and Rey gasped as the _Millennium Falcon_ appeared in front of them. Coming along with the _Falcon_ was a wave of-- warmth-power-light- _presence_ that rolled through the Force. Rey pulled her hands off the controls of her X-Wing as she desperately pulled herself back from her meditation before the presence, which _had_ to be Luke Skywalker, completely overwhelmed her.

Sometimes she felt Leia in the Force like this, something beautiful and terrible and implacable, like a storm rolling across the desert, but where Leia was the roar of a sandstorm in the distance, contained and cleansing unless you stood in its way; Luke (distantly she heard Chewie and Kaydel Ko over the comms, confirming that yes, this was the _Falcon_ , and yes, they had Luke onboard) was a thundering rainstorm, the crackle of lightning that brought light in a flash and crack and left life-bearing water and a patina of flowers in its wake. Power and life and light in the darkness, and Rey was caught in the middle.

Then the sense of a storm pulled back, and Rey blinked, feeling tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. Zephyr had kept her X-Wing flying in neat formation with the rest of the wing, and she was placed on the starboard side of the _Falcon_ as they turned back towards D’Qar for the flight back. Tara and Kaydel Ko were talking over the main comms, but there was also a light blinking in the corner of her HUD -- a private comm signal just for her. Hesitantly, Rey flipped her comm over to the private channel.

“Sorry for that, Blue Six.” The voice over her comm was more amused than Rey had anticipated, graveled with age but still light. “Nobody told me you’d be in our escort.”

“Nobody told me that we were escorting you in,” Rey said without thinking.

A laugh came across the comm. “Leia likes keeping things close to her chest. She’s been teaching you, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t tell me that, you see. She just told me that clearly I should come back, what with Ben becoming a nuisance and a new Force-sensitive around.”

Rey thought how Leia powered through debates on strength of will, and how Kylo Ren had been so surprised by her resistance, and the power that Luke Skywalker clearly possessed, and then said, “How well did that work?”

“I see why she likes you,” he said, and then his voice was almost serious for a moment. “No, that argument didn’t work very well. Certain other factors, which I’m sure you’ll hear about in time, were more relevant.”

“In time,” she muttered, making a face.

Gently, he said, “Some things aren’t great to talk about over comms.”

“I guess.” Rey paused. “Did Leia know you were getting in today?”

“We told her a span of a few days, in case something was intercepted. Maybe she sensed something else in the Force, and sent you here just in case.”

“It’s nice to meet you. This wasn’t what I expected.”

“No, Rey.” Sorrow came across his voice and the Force in equal measure. “It wasn’t what I expected either.”

They spent the rest of the flight back in silence. Rey switched back over to the main comm channel and listened to Tara and Kaydel Ko swapping stories easy as breathing. She didn’t try and go into the Force. Luke Skywalker was likely to keep his presence more controlled, now that he knew she was there, but... the memory of his power was enough to quiet her for a time.

When they landed on D’Qar, there was a crowd of people just like when Rey had first landed there, and she suspected it was for the same reason: the _Millennium Falcon_. Rey went through her shut-down procedures as fast as she could, popped Zephyr out of the astromech slot, and jumped out of the X-Wing, hitting the ground running towards the _Falcon_. Hearing Luke Skywalker’s voice was not the same thing as seeing him in person.

The crowd of Resistance members parted reluctantly around her as she pushed and cursed her way through, helmet tucked tightly against her side. When she got to the front, she stopped, stock-still, at what she saw. Leia, on her own, standing in front of the _Falcon_ ’s ramp as it hissed open. Kaydel Ko and Chewie came past, and she gave each of them a smile and a clap on the shoulder as they passed and the rest of the Resistance welcomed them home.

Then Luke Skywalker appeared.

He looked like an old man of the desert, Rey thought immediately. His robes were tan and beige and layered thickly around his body, and she could see the drape of a hood around his shoulders. His hair and beard were shot with gray, almost the same colour as Leia’s, his face was etched with the years of his life, and his eyes -- his eyes were deep-set and kind. Ridiculously, inevitably, he reminded Rey of Finn, because those eyes pulled at her heart in such similar ways.

Leia took a step forward, reaching out a hand, and Luke walked down the ramp to her, a smile deepening all the lines of his face. Rey watched, still half-frozen, as he wrapped her up in his robes, and she softened against him. Whether through eyes or the Force, it was the quietest and most relaxed Rey could remember seeing her. Luke looked up at her, and his smile widened, and Rey nodded, reflexively. This was why he had come home, after so long; she was sure of it now. Not for her, not for Kylo Ren or Ben, but for Leia in her grief. One piece of family that she could have and hold again, when everything else seemed lost.

Rey understood that.

The realization broke the moment’s hold on her body, and she turned away to give them the facade of privacy that the rest of the Resistance had created around them. Rey started through the crowd, walking its edge towards the hill that covered the command center; she might not be able to talk to Luke or Leia right now, but she was almost certain they would want to find her when they were done catching up. She may as well place herself somewhere they could find her easily even without using the Force.

Something bumped against her legs, and Rey looked down. BB-8 sat there, waiting, and then sang an earnest string of beeps about how Poe was looking for her. Rey giggled. “I was heading towards Command,” she told the droid. “Where’s he?”

BB-8 wobbled a little, and then said that Poe would find her there.

“Internal comms are mighty useful,” Rey said, and set off again, more determination in her stride now. The flight hadn’t been long enough or exciting enough for her to need to change out of her flightsuit yet. She was pretty sure that her fellow pilots would be doing so anyway, but she’d spent too long without many sets of clothing to really care; she didn’t stink, so nobody else would care either right now. Still, as she saw Poe waiting by the entrance to Command, she almost wished she had. Poe made an art out of dressing nicely in clothing that was old and worn and didn’t seem like it should work together at all.

But he smiled at her, irreverent and gleeful as always, and waved. “Rey! I heard you escorted the _Falcon_ back home!”

Rey laughed, and BB-8 burbled beside her. “Was that your idea of a great surprise, telling Tara but not anyone else?” she asked, stepping next to him and giving him a one-armed hug.

He shook his head, sending curls into her face before he released the hug. “That was the General’s idea. She didn’t want to get your hopes up if her hunch was wrong.”

“You knew.”

“She asked me for the pilot rotation so she could send you out there.” He shrugged, easy in today’s red shirt and blue vest. The yellow edging on both somehow made it not clash terribly. Rey still wasn’t sure how he managed it. “I asked her why, and she told me she thought her brother might be coming in today.”

“Cheater,” Rey grumbled, but she didn’t put any force behind it.

Poe laughed. “What’s he like?”

Rey thought about it, chewing on her bottom lip a little. She’d picked the habit up from him, and everyone thought it was hilarious and adorable. “He’s strong,” she finally said. “If Leia’s the desert’s cleansing, he’s the desert coming into bloom.”

“That is not helpful.”

She shrugged. “Not my fault you never lived in a desert.”

“Can’t you think of any other metaphors?” Poe leaned back against a tree, waving his hands in gestures that probably meant something to him, but looked wild to her. “Something based on flying or D’Qar, maybe?”

“He’s...” Rey drew in a breath and let it out, looking up at the clouds moving by, gentle and fluffy and white. “You know the way Finn looks? The way his heart is always in his eyes and his smile?”

“Yeah?”

“Luke’s like that.”

Poe didn’t really answer that. BB-8 didn’t either. Rey set her helmet on the ground and sat beside it, continuing to watch the clouds while waiting for Poe to say something.

He eventually said, “I hope she lets him be good for her.”

“Me too.”

“She needs something kind.”

Rey twisted to smile up at him. “Doesn’t everyone?”

His hand dropped down to her shoulder, warm and comforting. “She’s been without for longer than most of us.”

“I guess that’s true.” Rey sighed. “She was letting him hold her when he came off the _Falcon_.”

“That’s a start.”

“It’s more than she usually allows.”

“The Force will be with them,” Poe murmured, and it wasn’t quite a benediction but it wasn’t quite a prayer either.

Rey turned back to the sky, and reached out with the Force to the twin storms still standing by the landing field. One was familiar as the gardens, and almost felt like them right now, straining towards the sun despite being rooted to the ground. The other, newer, was like the rain she’d danced in a few weeks ago, Finn laughing beside her while Jess and Poe stood in a doorway smiling at them both.

“Yeah,” she said, drawing herself back. “I think it will be.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, good readers. I hope this chapter is somewhat satisfying, and that life won't cause another long delay in updates.

Leia closeted herself with Luke Skywalker for the rest of the day and the following night. The base murmured in their absence, waves of whispers wandering across the buried base. Rey prowled between them, hearing only snatches of conversations -- they kept being cut off when she drew too near. Something about her being a Jedi-in-training, one of the cooks explained to her when she cornered them. Leia and Luke Skywalker had to be doing _something_ important and Force-related, but it was still creepy to have the General out of contact for so long, since she was usually everywhere.

Rey nodded and left with her pockets stuffed full of fruit. One of the lessons she’d learnt best on Jakku was when it was pointless to argue. It was obvious that the whispers were because nobody had seen the way Leia fell into Luke Skywalker’s arms, or the way his head curled in towards her; they were a binary system that had spent too long apart. Of course they were going to spend their time catching up. That didn’t bother her. The reverence that the Resistance members treated him with did.

‘Master Skywalker’ rang through the halls as Rey paced the halls back towards the X-Wing hangar. Every time she heard that name, echoing and excited and wondering, her shoulders hunched a little more, and her spine curved, and by the time she was back in the hangar her skin felt raw. If she hadn’t told Jess she’d meet her here, at the end of Jess’ patrol, she would’ve given up and gone back to the lake. The water always helped. The people, with their sideways glances she was pretty sure they didn’t quite think she noticed, couldn’t.

The hangar had good corners, though, sheltered areas of almost-organised equipment where she could wait for Jess and watch without necessarily being seen. The droids knew where she was, she was certain, but since she wasn’t interfering with anything, they left her alone. The smell of oil and metal and plastic, all drifting over the still-strange scent of deep dark earth, comforted her. The sound of repulsorlifts helped even more. Rey peered through the crates she sat behind and saw the silhouettes of four X-Wings entering the hangar, trimmed in blue and marked with the right callsigns for Jess’ flight group. That was good. Something in her chest eased at that.

She still didn’t leave her spot until they landed and she saw Jess climb out of her X-Wing.

* * *

Luke Skywalker found her the following morning, awake at dawn and watching the sun rise above the still-strange hills and trees. She felt him before she saw him, his bright thrumming presence muted but unavoidable. Rey didn’t turn away from the sun; he didn’t mean her harm, and she thought it’d do him good to have _someone_ react in a less-than-impressed manner.

He sat himself next to her, wrapping his brown robe around dark clothing. He didn’t even look at her, just closed his eyes and breathed. Rey couldn’t help but eye him suspiciously. The birds singing around them to greet the light meshed with his presence, the scent of rain and flowers and clean hot sand. She waited until the sun had risen clear above the horizon and the world was settling in to the new day, just to see if he’d speak first, but he didn’t move that she could see, beyond his slow breaths.

“Why are you here?” she finally asked.

His breath stuttered.

Rey clarified, words tumbling out of her with more speed and heat than she’d expected. “Not on this planet, but sitting right here right now.”

“Ah.” Luke Skywalker opened his eyes and turned towards her with a gentle smile. “I like listening to the world wake.”

Rey frowned at him.

“Leia told me that she had been instructing you as best she knew.” His smile grew, and his eyes (bluer than the sky here, as blue as midday on Jakku) met hers. “I think she’s been doing a fine job.”

She pressed her hands flat onto her thighs. “Did she want you to train me?”

He dipped his head. “Do you think that necessary?”

“Leia’s very busy...” Rey fought the impulse to look away from the old Jedi’s face. She could match his gaze and his intensity. She would not back down. “She has been kind.”

“Excellent.” He grinned at her, and even with the beard and the untrimmed hair, looked at least a decade younger. “I’m glad that’s settled. You’re her apprentice. She can try and delegate instruction to me, but unless _you_ are willing, I don’t see a need to instruct you myself.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Apprenticeship?” He tilted his head. “A less skilled person is apprenticed to a more skilled one, who instructs them and guides them on their way to mastery of said skill. You and Leia clearly already have that relationship, though she refuses to admit it.”

She nodded, thoughtfully, and slipped a hand into the grass to stroke it. “Everyone calls you Master Skywalker.”

He winced a little. “I wish they wouldn’t.”

“What should they call you?”

“Is ‘Luke’ too hard?” He sighed and leaned back, looking out towards the hills. “Commander is a rank I earned. Master is one that I... could be given, I suppose, but not one I desire.”

“Luke,” Rey said, trying it out. “Leia thinks you should teach me lightsaber combat.”

“Does she even have a lightsaber anymore?”

Rey shrugged.

“Do you want to learn?” Luke looked at her, and the lines in his face and the Force were heavier than they had been. “It’s useful, but dangerous.”

“I do.” Rey unclipped the lightsaber from her belt and held it out to him. “Finn used it too, a little. Do you think you could teach him too?”

Luke looked from her face to the lightsaber, unreadable and silent for long breaths.

Then, with a sigh, he nodded.

* * *

Finn had ended up at the firing range out of sheer boredom. His mobility limited him to helping out in the kitchen, which the cooks appreciated, but wasn’t enough. Physical therapy took up some more time, but still not enough. Rey and Poe and Jess and the other pilots and staff spent time with him, but they were also rushing around on other errands as often as not.

Thus, the firing range. He had been top of his class, but Finn hadn’t picked up a blaster since Starkiller Base. If he was going to keep himself safe when the First Order inevitably came, he needed to be able to compensate for his aching shoulder and scarred back and legs that didn’t listen to his commands. Also a chair that required a hand to control, because as much as he trusted the Resistance doctors, he wasn’t about to let them put a chip in his head to link him directly to the chair.

The motions of cleaning and loading a blaster were easy, muscle memory unimpaired by the damage to his body. His mind settled into a careful blankness as he raised it up (harder, shoulder protesting) and aimed at the target (getting tired more quickly, can’t maintain steady bead effortlessly). He flicked the safety off and pulled the trigger in one smooth motion, and head the target dead-on, a perfect bullseye.

Then he turned the safety on and set the blaster down because his hands were shaking too much, and he wanted to lean forward in his chair but that would hurt too much. The sound of the blaster and the way it felt in his hand—

_Bloody fingers, burning bodies, unnecessary explosions, the_ look _of that mask pointed at him._

FN—

_Finn_ hit his chair’s controls more forcefully than he needed to, sending it backing out of the firing range. Half-blind, he turned it until he was facing the hills of D’Qar that surrounded the firing range. Nothing but green. No explosions. No blood. No danger,

He forced himself to breathe, the same way he breathed when trying to get his legs working again: steady inhale, a short pause with full lungs, a slow and extended exhale. Breathe into the tension, try and relax.

He was trembling. His back hurt. His shoulder burned. His legs felt leaden, and his hands were almost as hard to move. Carefully, one button at a time, he told the chair to return to his room. It had autopilot enough for that, so long as he was on the base and it could follow its pre-programmed maps of the pathways here. Then, Finn leaned back and tried to just look tired.

It helped that the tiredness was real, especially when he did his best to mask the trembling. That took more effort than anything else.

Nobody commented while he was moving through base, at least, and that was a blessing. In his room, Finn levered himself out of the chair and collapsed onto his bed. He ran the sheets through his fingers, the weave and scent of the room so utterly unlike the Stormtrooper dorms that he could say to himself even more easily, _You aren’t there anymore_.

By the time he realised he had been panicking, he had stopped, and had drifted almost all the way into sleep.

———

“Report your findings.”

“They have been very clever. The base appears to be functioning at full capacity, with all previously identified leaders at the helm. However, the base is almost abandoned. Organa maintains a skeleton crew keeping up appearances with the X-Wings, while the rest of the Resistance has moved to another, currently unknown, base. My recommendation would be to strike soon and hard. Enough symbolic leaders reside on D’Qar to cripple the Resistance, psychologically if not logistically, if we capture or destroy the base.”

“Acknowledged. You are dismissed, General.”

“Yessir.”

“As for you... Do not get carried away. Do not deviate from the mission I have given you. We paid grievously for your last... error in judgement. Do not fail me again.”

“I understand, Supreme Leader.”

“Go.”


	6. Chapter 6

Early morning, in an hour that Finn was certain many Resistance members called very late in the night, was quiet. He liked it that way. He’d taken the early shift with the cooks just so that he could wake up in the silent hour when nobody expected anything of him but that he provide them with something to warm their stomach and heart before bed or after waking at what they no doubt thought was too early an hour.

He stretched, as instructed, and breathed into the aches of his scars. They were healing. He could feel it, and Doctor Kalonia confirmed it. He just wished that it would happen faster. Then taking a shower and changing clothes wouldn’t be as much effort, compounded by both the tightness of scars and his legs’ refusal to listen to his instructions much of the time.

But he could cope. He was healing, and he was functional, and the Resistance wanted to keep him that way. He didn’t tell them that sometimes he dreamed of the resources the First Order could use to help injured Stormtroopers regain their full potential in a fraction of the time he was taking, because it wouldn’t make them feel any better. Also because the First Order wouldn’t have used them on him, not after Jakku. Not after Takodana. And, especially, not after Starkiller Base.

Finn smiled a little at that, looking up at the stars as he made his way across the murmuring base. Not the path he’d expected, but one he could accept.

He entered the main section of the base, where the mess hall and kitchens lived, and greeted his fellow shift workers with a nod. Most of them had volunteered for this shift, but that didn’t mean all of them enjoyed it, and Finn was fairly certain the quiet was part of why this shift was their preferred one anyway. So he fell to the repetitive but enjoyable task of chopping whatever fruit and vegetables were set before him. Nobody minded if he had some, and figured out that way what he liked best.

The one window in the kitchen had brightened by the time he took a break. He carefully wiped down his work station, so that someone else could take over if they wished, and then turned to the doors.

Luke Skywalker was sitting on a stool, dressed in soft black with an earth-tone cloak settled over his shoulders, his mostly-gray hair only sort of tamed. In that moment, Finn could see the family line that Kylo Ren had sprung from, the same way he saw it sometimes in the way General Organa walked or gestured imperiously at her officers. And then Skywalker smiled at him, and the lines of his face deepened in calm curves, and Finn took a surprisingly unshaky breath and approached.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Skywalker said, his voice a murmur underneath the clatter of food prep. “Is it alright to steal you away from your work?”

Finn glanced over his shoulder at his shiftmates. The nominal leader, a Toydarian named Yazza, nodded and waved a hand at him. Finn turned back to Skywalker and said, “I guess so.”

“Good.” Skywalker rose to his feet and opened the door, gesturing Finn through. Once in the hall, he added, “Rey didn’t believe me when I said that this hour was perfectly acceptable.”

Finn followed him. Nobody else was really in the halls yet. “She’s up just as early as I am, a lot of the time. And up later, too.”

“I’m an old man, though.” Skywalker’s brisk pace and light tone showed what he thought of that, Finn thought. “It’s not as seemly.”

Finn didn’t know what to say to that, and so he didn’t.

Outside, Skywalker led him to the top of one of the bunker hills, where they could look over the bluing sky and the stirring base. When Skywalker stopped, Finn did so as well, keeping his eyes on the older man. Skywalker just looked out over the base and the greenness of D’Qar, silent for long enough that Finn started to worry that he had forgotten why he was bringing Finn here.

Then, finally, he said, “Rey wishes me to offer to teach you to use a lightsaber properly.”

Finn blinked. He reached up with his left hand and touched the scar on his right shoulder. “You do know what happened last time I used one.”

“Yes.” Skywalker turned and faced him, somber. His eyes were shadowed, more than Finn really liked. Probably more than Skywalker liked, too. “You defended Rey at serious risk and cost to yourself. Would you do so again?”

“Yes,” he said, automatically and instinctively and before he’d even thought about it.

Skywalker smiled, and while it was echoed in his eyes that wasn’t all that lived in there. “The first time I truly fought with a lightsaber, I lost my hand and learned a truth about my heritage I didn’t want to accept.” He held up his right hand, wiggled the uncovered metal fingers. “I didn’t let that stop me. Your injuries — both the physical and the mental — are different, and need to heal in different ways. I will teach you to keep yourself and others safe with a lightsaber, but I do not have another blade already made. You would not need to carry one, not yet, unless you wish to build it yourself.”

Finn breathed out, long and slow, the way he’d been taught to calm himself since childhood. “I don’t know if I want to fight.”

“Yet you are capable of it.”

“I know.” He looked away, out at the shadows long-stretching across the base.

“This would just be another skill to add to your repertoire.” Skywalker’s voice was gentle, like the hum of a well-tuned engine. “The first things I would teach would be defensive skills. It helps nobody to know how to fight if they leave themselves open for another’s blow.”

Finn almost laughed, a little, at that. “I understand. And my injuries won’t be a problem?”

Skywalker smiled, somewhere in the corner of Finn’s vision. “I don’t believe so. You may need to adapt some of the standard forms, but it has to have been done before, and so it can be done again.”

“Okay.” Finn took in a breath and then let it out slowly. “When do you want to begin?”

“This afternoon.”

Finn nodded. The sun had reached them, though not yet the base in full. “Rey will know where to find me.”

* * *

Rey held her lightsaber loosely in one hand. The room that Luke had declared as their training space had once been a hangar, she’d been told, before half the ships had left for their new base. Which was still a set of coded coordinates without a name, because keeping secrets was second nature to Leia and her officers, and nobody had been told exactly where the new base was. Even Poe didn’t know, he’d said, and that had kept it from rankling too much that she didn’t.

In front of her, Luke stood with all the poise he tried to pretend he didn’t have. He was old, and had a layer of fat over most of his body, but he still moved quick and sure when he wanted to. His lightsaber, blade green as Takodana, angled across his body, and his eyes met hers. “Go on,” he said, lightly. “Do your best.”

He’d explained to her that lightsabers had different settings, and shown her the training mode, where lightsabers stung and burnt but didn’t slice right through a human body, but she still didn’t quite believe it. She stepped back into a balanced stance, the way she’d learnt with a staff, and relearnt for a lightsaber under Leia’s guidance, and activated her lightsaber — Luke’s old lightsaber — so that its glow, blue as his eyes, lay between them.

Luke nodded acknowledgement, and Rey stepped forward, slicing high and then low, across as quickly as she could, stabbing towards his gut and then his face, and listening as, every time, he caught her blow with the _buzz-crack_ of two lightsabers meeting.

And he was moving so much less than she was, too. Even smiling slightly.

At last, she stepped back, and tried to breathe slow and deep and _listen_ the way that Leia had explained to her. Her attacks were more precise, then, and Luke had to move his feet more, but he still stopped every single blow.

“Enough,” he said, after a few minutes had passed. He retreated, and she did as well, and their lightsabers snapped off at almost exactly the same time. He turned to Finn, and said, “That’s what I want to teach you.”

Finn’s mouth was slightly open, and his eyes wide. Rey could feel the surprise and wonder rolling off him. “What you were doing?”

“Mhmm.” Luke smiled at him. “An impenetrable defense is, as you can see, immensely frustrating to an attacker, no matter how good they may be.”

Rey scowled at him, only mostly because she could feel a blush creeping up her neck.

“But the Force helps, right?” Finn looked between them. “It lets you see her attacks coming.”

“It does, yes. But from what I’ve heard about you, and seen myself...” Luke folded his hands in front of him. Rey was pretty sure he did it to look more mystical. “I think you may have some talent in that area yourself.”

“What,” Finn said, voice strangled.

Luke raised an eyebrow. “You were considered one of the best Stormtroopers, you’ve said in your debriefing, yet you rebelled. You pick up new weapons without any practice, and do very well with them. Maz gave you the lightsaber, despite knowing Han better. You felt the death of Hosnean Prime. You held your own against... my nephew—” his face twisted briefly at that “—and you’re healing from your wounds at a rate that surprises Doctor Kalonia, though she’d never say it to your face. Not to mention the radiance around you.”

Finn stared at him. So did Rey. She’d known about all those things. She’d even seen some of those talents in action herself. But the _Force_ being the light around him? She hadn’t thought of it that way. It had seemed... well, it had seemed like a lot of things, all important but all much more personal. She moved over to Finn and grabbed his hand. He looked up at her, eyes achingly open and clear, and said, “He— it makes sense.”

“It might not come easily to you,” Luke said quietly. “It doesn’t, not to everyone. If you can, talk to Leia about what it’s like to fight for the Force, and to choose not to follow the Jedi path even though you have that option.”

Finn nodded, still looking up at Rey.

She laid her other hand on his shoulder and faced Luke. “I think we need some time to consider this.”

“Of course.”

Before any of them had time to move, however, alarms started blaring, and Leia’s voice came over the comms: “Begin scramble and evacuation procedures. They’re here.”

She sounded as perfectly controlled as always, Rey thought, even as she squeezed Finn’s hand and said, “I need to go. Keep yourselves safe, go to the _Falcon_ , I’ll see you on the other side.”

She didn’t even hear their responses, not as words. Finn’s rush of protective feelings was clear in her heart, and Luke’s worried hope for her rang loud as a bell in her mind. She nudged them aside and concentrated on getting to the hangar bay. The Resistance didn’t need Rey, Jedi-in-Training right now. They needed Blue Six, ready to fly and all her attention focused on the space in front of her.

In the hangar, everything was abuzz, mechanics and pilots and droids shouting at each other in at least ten languages. Rey concentrated on suiting up, getting all the buckles and zippers on her flight suit buttoned. Jess ran past her, a quick handclasp and smile all they had before her girlfriend was Blue Three and a squadmate and Rey couldn’t afford to think of her as anything else.

Rey breathed deep, and climbed into her X-Wing. Zephyr, her astromech, was already in place, and had run all the pre-flight checks. “Thanks,” she said, and closed the cockpit. She ran her hands over the controls, settling herself in this space. She knew this ship. She’d flown it on patrols and in sims and with everyone around her. She knew what she was doing. The snubfigher knew her, too, and they could work together.

“Black Leader ready. Red Squad, sound off.”

Twelve voices, ranging from so calm they had to be hiding something to so nervous Rey was sure the speaker had to be shaking, rang out over the comms.

“Red Squad, go get ‘em. Blue Squad, Three Flight is already out there. Sound off.”

Captain Drayson started with Blue One, and Rey barely registered half the people talking before it was her turn to say, “Blue Six, everything’s green.”

As soon as Blue Eight had checked in, Black Leader said, “Go!”

One Flight lifted off together, soaring out of the hangar, with Two Flight just behind. Clouds rushed past them as they soared into space, and Rey finally felt almost calm. Her HUD lit up, green and red markers seeding the display as they got close enough for it to matter. The red dots outnumbered the green at least two-to-one, but they didn’t need to destroy the enemy to win.

They just needed to hold out long enough for everyone on base to be safely in hyperspace. That, as things went, wasn’t too hard a goal.


	7. Chapter 7

The sky’s ended up filled with fighters, green and red on the HUD helping mark them as much as the visual differences. The sense of wingmates-- friends-- around her helps differentiate them, too. Rey breathed out, holding her X-Wing steady as they closed in. Comm chatter filled her ears, and Zephyr marked up her HUD to account for all the data streaming back and forth almost faster than Rey could parse it. Even with sim practice, translating the 2D HUD to the 3D realm of the upper atmosphere was hard.

A cluster of First Order TIE fighters -- interceptor-based, sleek and fierce and cutting off the stars with their jagged wings -- surrounded a shuttle Rey recognised viscerally. Even from a distance, even barely being able to see it, _he_ pressed on her senses, familiar as hunger and desired even less. She tapped her comm, said, “Ren’s in the shuttle.”

Poe cut in before anyone could question her. “Thanks for the info, Blue Six. Red Squad, that’s your target.”

Rey settled back into her cockpit as Red Squad confirmed their orders, trying to ignore the twist in her chest. She took a deep breath. She didn’t need to face him. Not now. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, him in the shuttle and her in a snubfighter. If she faced him again ( _when_ she faced him again,) it needed to be fair. Saber to saber, if possible.

Zephyr blared a warning at her and she spun reflexively, letting a blast of laser fire skip off the edge of her shields. “Thanks,” she said. She shook her head and tightened her fingers on the controls, focusing on the fighters in front of her.

No time to be distracted. Just time to shoot, and protect.

She could do this.

* * *

Everyone had somewhere to go. The base was chaos, yes, but it was _organized_ chaos. Even Luke Skywalker seemed to know what was going on -- his face had tightened, hardened, when the alarms went off, but he’d started striding out barely after Rey. Finn followed him, as much for the look and tiny gesture Skywalker had given as a lack of other good options. All he’d been told about what to do in an event like this was, well. Get somewhere safe. Onto a transport, presumably. Poe had never quite gotten that far in his plans.

Fighter pilots, Finn told himself as he followed Skywalker. It was because fighter pilots always knew what their job was when other fighters came in. Go up and shoot things. A lot simpler than waiting around to be--

Skywalker had his arms and was staring into his soul, it felt like, eyes summer-blue and almost glowing from within. “Stay with me,” he said, and it didn’t quite feel like an order even though it had the force of one. “Finn, we’re going to the _Falcon_. I can’t move you unless you let me.”

He blinked at Skywalker. “I was with you. I am still with you.”

Skywalker smiled, something that looked like it might’ve been a laugh at another time, eyes crinkled and mouth twisted. “You weren’t, for a moment.”

“Really?” Finn thought about it, and then shrugged a little. “Can’t remember. We need to get going, though, right?”

“Yes. That’s exactly right.” Skywalker withdrew, but he kept a hand hovering near Finn’s shoulder as he walked, as if he wanted to touch but couldn’t. Finn didn’t even try to understand. Skywalker was weird. This situation was weirder. Nothing had happened, no explosions or blaster fire or even enemies in the halls. Just the normal chaos of a threatened base.

The _Falcon_ was on the green, not in one of the hangers like it usually was. Its engines were already glowing, and Finn accelerated towards it; this wasn’t a ground battle. Nothing he could do from here. In the _Falcon_ up in the sky, he could use the guns. They worked better now, Chewie had promised him (through Rey), so they shouldn’t get stuck again.

As Finn got onto the ramp up, he saw another craft coming down.

Broad black wings folded back up as the First Order command shuttle landed, not next to the _Falcon_ but far closer than Finn wanted. Beside him, Skywalker stopped short and cursed, an impressive array of swear words that Finn only half recognised the languages of, let alone the words.

“Get inside,” Skywalker said, and this time it was an order. “This is not your fight. Not right now.”

Finn nodded, but didn’t move. His fingers were frozen on the controls, and he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the silhouette of the shuttle. He couldn’t see what was happening, but his imagination -- memory -- filled in the gaps. The ramp extending. Stormtroopers walking down. Kylo Ren in the middle, black and bold and with his saber the colour of blood screaming to the world of _danger_ and _devastation_ and _death_.

Skywalker’s hand on his shoulder. “ _Go_ ,” Skywalker said, and something inside Finn snapped (into? out of?) place, and his chest tightened and he turned, on autopilot, to go inside.

He heard the ramp close behind him.

He knew, with awful certainty, that Skywalker wasn’t aboard.

* * *

D’Qar is green and full of life, and he had forgotten what that feels like. Thousands of little lives assault him with their presence -- nothing more than blips saying _I am here!_ and exulting in that sheer joy.

Kylo Ren hates it.

He can’t think through the tumult of life, can’t think of anything more than _I am here for a reason_. The stronger, deeper pulses of sentient life stand out among the little sparks of insects. There are no birds here, nor mammals -- some lizards remain, and other reptiles, not fast enough to scatter, small enough to burrow into hiding in the rocks -- so there is nothing to confuse his senses as he searches for _her_. For _them_.

Stormtroopers surround him, muted in the Force. He can see perfectly well with his eyes, especially the HUD that hovers, just-visible, on his visor. The same technology is given the stormtroopers, so they know who to praise and who to scold as missions end. He scans the area for the rush-roar of _fire_ and _light_ that are the beacons he seeks. He thinks one is in the air, but everyone was too fast, too focused for him to drink in the particular glow of a Force-user among so many dedicated souls.

Here, on the ground, he will have more luck.

The Stormtroopers form a screen around him as he stalks through the base. It looks like the faded memories of his dreams, in the style if not the particulars. He turns towards the center. They are always there at the center of things. He knows this. There is something about being in the middle that being attuned to the Force makes simpler, though he has heard too many explanations why to care anymore. He just knows this: If he goes there, he will find what he is looking for. The Force tells him this, and so does his heart.

So he turns, and he walks, slow and deliberate, not stressing the wound in his side that had been healed too quickly, stitched together by medical droids using bacta-thread and wrapped up in pads that still press against him under the layers of armour supposed to keep him safe. The angry scar on his face twisted even more deeply, a pounding headache that hadn’t left him since Starkiller’s death. He doesn’t speak much anymore, just stares straight ahead and listens to his Supreme Leader’s orders.

Now, that gaze is locked onto a pulse of the Force that he knows as easy as breathing. Luke Skywalker has returned, and he hadn’t even needed to chase him down. Kylo Ren smiles at that, letting his face twist through the pain. He quickens his pace, and turns on his new lightsaber. This one cracks yellow, and the crossguard is shorter, more tightly focused. He listens to it sweep through the air, the sound purer than he is used to, the blade dancing easily in his hand. This is right, he tells himself. This is what he came here for.

He gestures to the stormtroopers and they halt. He hears them chattering to themselves, spreading out to search for laggard Resistance members, and then ignores them. They are not important. The deep throbbing heartbeat that sings _Luke Skywalker_ to him is all that matters now, a drum that pounds with every step he takes.

And then, behind him—

There are two heartbeats now, twin suns in the Force. One is steady, eternal, precise; it will persevere through anything, bright with belief and _hope_. The other is fiercer, clarion and trumpeting its presence to anyone who will listen; the high sharp cry of a hunting bird, of a krayt dragon, of grief and drawn steel.

He hasn’t felt that presence in years.

He hasn’t _wanted_ to feel that presence.

Kylo Ren stops, eyes closed, and is suddenly, terribly, glad that there are no stormtroopers to see him have his heart ripped open.

He turns to the second presence, the one he can hear across the universe if he wishes to, the one that has surrounded him for as long as he’s been even a dream, a speck of the universe not quite breathed into shape, and he says, “Hello.”

Princess Leia, General Organa, Huttslayer, Lady Vader, hero and savior of a thousand worlds or more—Ben Organa-Solo’s mother. Kylo Ren’s enemy.

She looks at him, and he can see the tears in her eyes.

“Hello, Ben.”


	8. Chapter 8

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says, and he’s not even sure what he’s warning against.

His hand tightens on his lightsaber. Golden sparks are tiny explosions against his thick robes. General Leia Organa has no lightsaber to hand. She has built one of her own, he knows that, but she did not carry it. (He had wondered, sometimes, if she would carry it now, and then he had pushed the thought away.) Yet she looks at him, and her spine is straight, her gaze focused.

If she is afraid, she does not show it. She never has.

Behind him, the bloom of Master Skywalker’s presence looms. There is no threat, no crack or buzz of a lightsaber, so he does not yet turn. 

Leia Organa’s hair is coiled around her head, a pattern he knows woven with regret. _How long has she–?_ he wonders, cutting himself off before he can finish the thought. She moves closer to him, steps slow and steady. “Your face,” she says, a hand reaching towards his mask.

Kylo Ren flinches, retreats a pace, brings his lightsaber up in an instinctive guard against a mother’s empty hand. He does not strike her. If she had been holding a weapon of her own, he would have struck it, would have knocked it aside. But she has no physical weapon, just her posture as she draws back into herself, closes her eyes against tears.

Master Skywalker says, “Ben,” and Kylo Ren whirls to face him, lightsaber a yellow extension of his arm.

He chokes on his response, stutters out, “M– Skywalker,” instead.

“Why come here yourself?” Master Skywalker asks, curiosity — as ever — the predominant tone in his voice.

Kylo Ren lowers his lightsaber. He cannot bear to turn it off, not flanked as he is. The crossguard hums, heavy despite its source in light. “I did not know you would be here,” he says, and it’s not an answer to Master Skywalker’s question, he tells himself. “Thank you for saving me a step.”

“Were you here for Rey?” Leia Organa asks, voice harsh, breath sharp.

He stiffens. Around him, insects drop to the ground, wings frozen. “Is that her name?”

A TIE fighter screams overhead, drowning out any verbal response. He sees Master Skywalker’s eyes close, mouth move in what might have been benediction or prayer from another man, but was almost certainly Huttese curses. Leia Organa’s presence in the Force flares, bright and angry as fire, and then banks to the conflicted seethe it’s been since he arrived.

“Enough,” Master Skywalker says. His eyes focus behind Kylo Ren. “We’re running out of time.”

“I agree,” Leia Organa says. She moves towards him, and he turns to face her.

Or, he tries.

The Force is wrapped around him, tight as the bubbles he creates to catch laser bolts, leaving him only enough space to breathe. He can feel it when Leia Organa touches his shoulder, feel her touch burn through the layers of cloth that are meant to protect him from the outside world.

 _Oh, Ben,_ his mother whispers in his head, and then—

* * *

Chewie’s growls sounded louder than usual in the _Falcon_ ’s cockpit. R2-D2’s answering warbles sounded just as aggravated, even though Finn couldn’t understand a word either was saying. If they spoke slower, he could sometimes catch a few words, but when they were just yelling at each other? Not a chance.

Finn forced himself to breathe calmly. The _Falcon_ was old, but it still had readouts that could translate both Shyriiwook and Binary, and if he focused on the black-and-blue readouts everything would make sense. He levered himself into the dorsal turret and pulled on the headset there. The HUD clicked on, and he read–

_Idiot’s going to get himself killed._

_Leia—_

_At least as much!_

_Together they’re okay._

_Usually._

_Sometimes._

_This thing running?_

_Got it in perfect condition!_

_For a junk project._

_You’re one to talk._

_Fuck off._

_My ship._

The ongoing litany of filthy language got Finn to grin for a moment, and then he looked out the transparisteel and his vision grayed out.

Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa were carrying a limp form between them, tall and black-shrouded. They were coming towards the _Falcon_.

Finn knew his mouth moved. He was pretty sure nothing came out. He couldn’t shoot at Kylo Ren. Luke and Leia were important. They were to be protected. Kylo Ren was terrible. He couldn’t kill Leia or Luke to get to him.

The _Falcon_ shuddered. The boarding ramp.

Finn couldn’t see the trio anymore.

His shoulder hurt. His back ached. He couldn’t breathe.

He curled forward, trying to focus on anything other than _No why is he here he shouldn’t be here we fought him he killed Han why is he here why is he here why is he HERE_.

All he could see was snow, and a red lightsaber.

Engines engaged, rocking the ship beneath him, and Finn gasped, eyes opening in a flash. The base whipped by beneath him. Clouds.

Rey’s voice in his ears (the comm, he was still wearing the comm), “Took you long enough!”

Leia, in return: “We’re here now. Everyone’s safe.”

“General’s out, everyone!” Poe’s joy suffused even the crackly comm. “You know the drill. See you at the rendezvous!”

Clicks and oral confirmations echoed through the comms, and then the distinctive hum of engines revving to lightspeed buzzed through Finn. A moment later, the stars stretched to eternity and they were–

Not safe, not exactly. But at least nobody was going to shoot at them now.

Finn took off the headset, made sure that the turbolaser’s controls were out of the way, and then curled forward and shook for a long time.

* * *

He can’t move.

Everything smells familiar, sounds familiar, but _he can’t move_ and that’s unacceptable. Also, it’s dark. But that, he realises, is because his eyes are closed. Solvable problem.

He opens his eyes.

Immediately, he closes them again.

 _Stupid—_ He breathes slowly, willing away the moisture in his eyes. He’s not wearing a helmet. Anyone would be able to see his weakness. Nobody was in the cabin with him (that he saw), though. He’s...

Safe isn’t the right word. He’s on the _Millennium Falcon_ , where Leia Organa and Master Luke had clearly taken him after knocking him unconscious. He can feel both of them, now that he’s thinking about it; banked fires as familiar as his own heartbeat, in the cabin. Chewbacca’s there too, solid as a wroshyr tree. Artoo’s probably with them, but he was never as good at sensing droids as Luke.

Automatically, he reaches out for the other presence that should be on the _Falcon_ , but there’s nothing there. No scent of smoke and oil, no whiskey-scent, nothing like the feel of cards in a hand, no laughter like air to buoy up everyone around.

Instead, there’s just that blasted stormtrooper, a heart like a sea at dawn, storm-troubled but so _clear_ underneath that. He shouldn’t be here.

He shouldn’t exist.

Kylo Ren jerks out of his head, tries to sit up, and can’t.

The bonds holding him down don't exist. They’re woven out of love and worry and a belief that it would be dangerous (for _him_ ) if he were to roam. Kylo Ren growls, anger twisting the scar on his face, and relishes the pain. He can work with this.

They’re taking him somewhere they believe is safe. Once there, he can contact the First Order. If he brings the full wrath of the First Order down upon them, it will make up for his capture, and Lord Snoke will be pleased.

Yes. Kylo Ren calms himself. He will bide his time. They will come to regret this indignity.

They will learn that he _is not Ben_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN THIS (I was just, y'know. Busy.)
> 
> Happy holidays, everyone.

He kept his screams in his throat. He caught every single one and held them in, allowing only muffled moans and groans and heaving sobs out, and none of them were allowed onto the comms. He can’t show that weakness with _him_ on board.

The damp of his jacket under his cheek made him frown a little. There wasn’t any reason for it to be damp. He reached up, felt his face. That wasn’t actively damp, but there were streaks of crusted substances on it. He’d been... crying. Yes. He had been. It hadn’t just been screams he’d stifled; it was acknowledgement of tears. He took a breath, focusing on the rise and fall of his chest. Simple physical reactions. He could do this.

“My name—” his voice cracked. He coughed, and tried again. “My name is—is _Finn_.”

Finn forced the last word out of his lungs with all the air he had, and it still barely sounded louder than a whisper. He gripped the deactivated controls of the turbolaser and looked into the blue-black endlessness of hyperspace. “Okay,” Finn told himself, feeling more stable with every exterior sensation he could feed back into himself. “First priority: Get out of here.”

He’d picked the dorsal turret because climbing down after the battle seemed like it would be easier than climbing up after, but that had been before he’d had a— “A panic attack,” he said, forcing it to be real. He had had a panic attack. Because _he_ was on the _Falcon_. Finn felt something like his ribs coming loose, and clenched his hands. His fingernails bit into the palms of his hands, and with the pain he gritted out, “It’s perfectly reasonable, nothing weird about it, completely normal reaction to be having.”

Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get down on his own after all. Finn grimaced. “Come on, it’s not like you can pry yourself out of here on your own. Maybe if your spine were all the way healed, and your legs worked all the way again.” He’d made it up here through arm strength, willpower, and probably Skywalker would say the Force helped, but Finn still wasn’t sure if he believed that. He breathed in again, slowly, carefully. “So just press the intercom and ask someone to get you out, okay?”

Finn’s hands stayed right where they were.

He stared at them, deep brown on the silver-and-black controls. No more gloves, no more armor. “I am Finn,” he whispered, “and I can ask for help and have it _given to me_.”

His hand trembled, but it moved, and he pressed the intercom. “Hi,” he said, voice cracking but hopefully not too badly, especially on such an old intercom. “Would someone please help me out of the dorsal turret? I don’t think I can get back out on my own.”

Finn released the intercom and went back to watching hyperspace. The coils of blue and black and white were hypnotic and soothing, now that he was paying attention to them; it gave him something external to pay attention to, and it never repeated.

It didn’t take long before the intercom to crackled to life. General Organa’s voice came across, only a little staticky. “Luke’s coming to help.”

“Thank you,” Finn said. He twisted himself so that he could peer down the access shaft. Sure enough, Skywalker’s scraggle-haired self appeared within a minute.

“I could climb up,” he said, tilting his head and smiling a little too happily. “Or I could use the Force. _Or_ —” and his smile turned impish “—you could help me use the Force.”

Finn stared down at him. His chest felt like it was made of stone. He couldn’t feel his feet, which was a bit weird, and his head felt funny. “How about you just do it.” He managed to make his voice a flat monotone instead of shaking, so it was at least audible.

Skywalker’s smile disappeared, and he nodded. “Do try to relax. Or, well — try not to resist.”

Finn was about to ask how he’d do either of those things, when Skywalker raised an arm and warmth surrounded him. It tingled, and buzzed, and soaked into his skin in a way that reminded Finn deeply of Rey’s infectious smiles and how it felt when Poe laughed against his skin. Relaxing wasn’t hard, if the sensation was the Force. He hadn’t been aware of how much tension he’d built up in his body until his shoulders dropped a good centimeter, and his spine uncurled at least five degrees.

Not _resisting_ as he rose up into the air and came slowly down the access shaft — that was harder.

Every instinct told him to grab on to something, to make sure that he wasn’t going to fly out an airlock or into something. He’d never experienced anything like this, except in microgravity, and this was nothing like that; he still had weight, and if he moved it didn’t send him spinning. It just made Luke’s face tighten a little in concentration, so Finn held himself still until Luke set him down in his chair. Then Finn immediately pulled himself into a proper sitting sensation, running his fingers over the controls until it was activated and floating properly again.

“Thanks,” Finn said, once he was settled.

Skywalker smiled. “It’s no trouble.” His eyes flickered, like he was trying to hide a frown. “Are you alright?”

“ _He’s_ here,” Finn said. He didn’t bother making it a question, because it wasn’t one. “It’s a little upsetting. I’m sure you understand.”

Skywalker winced, and Finn felt a flare of bitter satisfaction. Even legendary Jedi Masters weren’t infallible. “Ah, yes,” Skywalker said, fidgeting with his sleeves. “It seemed like the expedient solution.”

Finn opened his mouth, then closed it, and said, carefully, “I am going to go to a bunk on this garbage heap, and expect that I will be far away from _him_ , and not see him at all. Okay?”

“Yes.” Skywalker paused. “Is there anything else Leia, Chewie, or I can do to help?”

He thought about it for about three seconds and then said, “Probably not.”

Skywalker nodded. “That’s fair. Let us know if that changes.”

Finn nodded sharply, and took himself off to a bunkroom, where he could ignore things in peace.

* * *

Blue Squadron came out of hyperspace above a small, gray-green planet with no moon. According to the coordinates Poe had sent out at their hyperspace rendezvous and direction change, which Zephyr had input and then explained, it was called Quaensan Prime, and it was the Resistance’s newest base.

Rey didn’t really care where it was; it was somewhere they would be able to land, and therefore somewhere she’d be able to stand and stretch. Zephyr had been playing card and strategy games with her as they went through hyperspace, and that had helped keep her from getting completely fed up with being stuck in a small box for hours on end, but it wasn’t the same as being on a planet, or even a ship that wasn’t a snubfighter.

“Black Leader here.” Poe sounded tired. “Check in, Red Squadron.”

Only eleven voices — Red Eight had been shot down. Rey’s chest tightened. She hadn’t known Eo very well, but they had been part of the celebration when she qualified for Blue Squadron, and they’d been a face she recognised and nodded to in the mess hall. Now they were stardust.

Poe’s voice sounded as tight as her chest when he said, “Blue Squadron.”

They hadn’t lost anyone.

One out of twenty-four, when they’d been outnumbered, was lucky as all the stars. Rey closed her eyes and breathed out, forcing her fingers to unclench. The Force had been with them in the sky above D’Qar. Hopefully it wouldn’t come calling for more lives anytime soon.

“Let’s go see our new home,” Poe said, and the collective cheering and voiced relief across the comms made him chuckle. Rey wished she could hear it through the air, not through the comms. _Soon,_ she told herself. _Once we’re on the ground._ “Black Leader out.”

Rey flew in formation with the rest of her squadron, barely even thinking. In front of her, X-wings glimmered in the starlight, S-foils closed tight as they arrowed towards the planet’s surface. Zephyr displayed the coordinates for Quaensan Base on her HUD without any commentary, letting her follow the flight path in silence. She might be alone in the cockpit, but she wasn’t isolated, not anymore, and that helped.

The planet itself was very rocky. Zephyr scrolled information across the HUD as she navigated, telling her that the atmosphere was thinner than D’Qar, and there was less water. Rey sighed at that; she’d really liked the lakes and rivers of D’Qar. Still, Quaensan Prime had a stable ecosystem and air breathable by most Resistance species, including humans. It would take a few days to adjust to the lowered oxygen content, but after the adjustment period there wouldn’t be any side effects.

They dove along a mountain and leveled out about halfway down, curving along the ridges until they reached structures that Rey could instantly tell had been rebuilt recently. “Where’d this come from?” she asked Zephyr.

_Quaensan Prime was lost to the Reslian Purge 38 standard years ago,_ Zephyr told her. _The Resistance found records of it and cleaned up this area, as it already has the majority of the needed infrastructure._

“Thanks,” Rey said. She focused on flying into the hanger; it was larger than the one on D’Qar, but not by much, and the crosswinds made it more difficult. Still, she managed, and soon the X-wings were all settled on the ground. Rey went through the shut-down sequence, glad to see that nothing on her X-wing was damaged badly. Some things could use adjustments, but that happened after any period of heavy use. She hit the final switches to let Zephyr out of the snubfighter, and then popped the hood and stood up herself.

The first thing she did was luxuriate in the feeling of stretching, of feeling every muscle and tendon in her back loosen in the simple act of straightening out. The second thing she did was take a breath of the air. The third thing she did was tell herself that just because it didn’t feel like she was breathing enough didn’t mean that her lungs weren’t working; it was just the air being less rich than any of the other planets or ships she’d been on. Rey stood there and breathed until her brain stopped telling her that something was wrong, and then jumped down to the hangar floor.

Automatically, she looked around for Jess. Blue Three was just up ahead, and Jess was heading towards her, helmet under her arm, hair a sweaty and ruffled mess, and face shining with relief. Rey dropped her own helmet to the ground and ducked under her X-wing, colliding with her girlfriend with an exhaled, “Thank the _Force_.”

Jess’ arms wrapped around her, and she said, right into Rey’s ear (or maybe her neck), “That was not fun.”

“Yeah. But we’re here.” Rey breathed in the scent of her girlfriend. Even right after battle, when stale sweat and recycled air was the main thing clinging to her, Jess smelled comforting. “We held them off long enough.”

“We’re gonna be safe,” Jess said. She let her head rest on Rey’s shoulder. “Fuck, I hope they’ve got proper showers here. And food. And a place to sleep. Maybe not in that order.”

Rey laughed, and kissed Jess’ hair. “Come on, let’s go see what they’ve got for us. Food first.”

“Yeah, alright.” Jess pulled herself upright, and slid her hand down to Rey’s. “Lead the way.”

Rey followed the crowd of other pilots and ground crew into a side door and into the mountain. The enclosed space wasn’t nice, but the echoing promises of food and showers kept her going. After she slept, she told herself, she’d go exploring until she was comfortable here. At least she knew she wouldn’t be alone in needing to explore, this time; everyone she’d flown in with had just as much to learn about the base as she did.

It was a nice, comforting thought.

The following thought, which was that she still hadn’t seen Poe or Finn, was somewhat less comforting, but she was sure they’d find each other and take care of themselves. They were good at that, after all. Rey nodded to herself, and hurried forward, to the now-noticeable smell of hot and filling food.


	10. Chapter 10

He still knows the way it sounds when the _Falcon_ leaves hyperspace. The engines still vibrate through the old ship, but it’s not as insistent; it loses some of its urgency, and settles back into its normal rattling. Kylo Ren growls and adjusts himself on the bench they’ve installed him on. He still hasn’t been allowed to sit up. Leia Organa’s Force presence is indomitable, and he’d been hoping that would have changed since—

_Since what?_ Kylo Ren asks himself, staring up at the chipped and scratched ceiling. _Since you left?_

He laughs at himself, then. _Since I grew stronger with the Supreme Leader, obviously._

There’s a little bit of himself that won’t stop prodding that answer, the same way he’d played with loose teeth as a child, seeing how far it could go until it bled, seeing how much it hurt when he popped it back into alignment because he couldn’t pull it out yet, there was still a tether keeping it in his jaw.

Kylo Ren tries to ignore that part.

Nobody has talked to him since he came onboard. He isn’t sure what Leia Organa or Master Skywalker are even planning with him. He hasn’t even _seen_ Chewbacca or R2-D2, though he knows now they’re on the ship — given enough time, even the droid is a distinct presence in the Force, and the _Falcon_ ’s own existence in the Force has a space for R2-D2 that’s just as well-worn as those for Chewbacca or Leia Organa or Master Skywalker.

_Or you_ , the traitorous part of his mind whispers, and Kylo Ren shuts it out with what should have been a slash of his hand but was really just an abortive movement against Leia Organa’s strength.

The tenor of the _Falcon_ ’s rattles changed again as they entered atmosphere. He had no idea where they were; it was equally likely to be a prison planet, just for him, as it was to be the Resistance’s new base. He was hoping for the latter; it would be much simpler to get free then.

He breathes, meditating as best he can as he waits. He can feel the pain and anger of the stormtrooper in another room; the one presence that the _Falcon_ doesn’t know intimately, though the stormtrooper knows the ship and has been accepted by it. Kylo Ren wants to push on that pain, nudge it until it’s something he can work with, but—

Master Skywalker’s presence clouds his mind, and the man himself pokes his head into the room Kylo Ren is bound in, and says, “Really?”

Kylo Ren sighs, and releases the Force. “Where are we landing?” he asks.

“Not when?” Master Skywalker sits down next to Kylo Ren. If he turns his head, he can just see the travesty of his beard and hair. “I’m afraid I haven’t been told where we are either.”

Silence lingers. Kylo Ren shuts his eyes. Master Skywalker’s face, despite being older and covered in more unkempt hair, is too familiar to stare at here. He also seems content to let the silence last. Kylo Ren tries to breathe through it, to not give voice to the growing tangle of emotions in his chest. But the landing gear groans underneath them, and Kylo Ren — voice far softer than he intended — says, “Why are you here?”

“Leia needed me, and reminded me of that.” Master Skywalker leans back against the wall. He doesn’t try and touch Kylo Ren, for which he is thankful; he’d been expecting that. “Your presence here simply adds to the reasons she needs me.”

He tries not to think about that. His eyes snap open anyway. The ceiling is more comfortable than memory. “Why are you _here_?” he asks, and he would gesture at the room if he could, but Leia Organa’s will holds him fast.

“To keep you company.” Master Skywalker’s voice is so gentle it’s almost painful. “And to keep you safe, when we enter the base itself.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Kylo Ren spits, an instinctive reaction.

“You might not,” Master Skywalker says, as the _Falcon_ settles onto the ground and the engines cut out, “but those around you do.”

Kylo Ren sits up, and it only registers half a beat after that he shouldn’t have been able to do that. He snarls, and reaches for the lightsaber that is—

In Master Skywalker’s hand. Master Skywalker is _smiling_ at him, of all things, and is standing easily by the door. “I taught you better than this,” he says, gesturing with the lightsaber. “It’s a shame; the design is fascinating, but the crystal’s impurities leave it unstable. I’m surprised it never exploded in your hand.”

He looks away, clenching his hands. “I’m not your student anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not still your teacher.” Master Skywalker’s hand settles on his wrist. “I should shackle you,” he says, and there, _finally_ , is the bite that Kylo Ren kept waiting for. His voice isn’t steel the way Leia Organa’s is, but it’s the unstoppable force of a storm.

Kylo Ren looks into Skywalker’s eyes, at the anger hardening his usually so mobile face, and forces his voice to be cool and uncaring as he says, “Are you going to?”

Skywalker looks at him, and says, “No.”

But when he releases Kylo Ren’s wrist, the Force wraps around in its place, urging Kylo Ren to follow in his footsteps. Kylo Ren stumbles on the first few strides, until he realises that he needs to take shorter steps. He’s taller than Skywalker, but Skywalker’s pace is easy, while Kylo Ren’s is crabbed, hobbled by the Force.

He hates it. And he can’t do anything about it so long as he keeps moving, because his mind is still scrambling to keep up with what’s going on around him and Skywalker’s mind has always been a well of patience, even in the midst of anger.

He’d already told himself he’d wait. That the Resistance base would offer him more information he could bring back to the Supreme Leader. This was just another way of forcing him to wait.

There’s nobody else on the _Falcon_ when they disembark. The landing ramp closes behind them, and Kylo Ren’s sure that it’s Skywalker’s doing. Then he looks up, and he’s hit with the full force of—

_fury-hate-anger-rage-fear-wrath I am a target and I am vulnerable I have no mask to hide behind_

—and he drops to his knees.

_I am weak this is what He warned me about_

Skywalker is beside him, lifting him up with a hand and the Force. He focuses all his attention on that point of contact, using the Force in the only way left to him: to create a shield between himself and the onlookers, cutting out all the emotion pounding at him, until there’s nothing left but quiet, Skywalker’s touch, and the cold mountain air.

* * *

As soon as the _Falcon_ landed, Finn left. He thought he heard General Leia calling behind him, but ignored her in favor of getting off the _Falcon_ and the haunting presence on it. There weren’t many people in the landing bay, for which he was grateful, and the one person he saw and immediately recognised is Poe. Finn turned towards him without a second thought; Poe was still wearing his flight suit, and bits of his hair stuck to his forehead, and he was also in that moment the most beautiful person Finn had ever seen.

Poe’s face lit up, too, as soon as he saw Finn, the kind of exhausted smile that made all his affection clear. Finn stopped his chair right in front of Poe, because running his boyfriend (today, he realised, was one of the days where that word felt unreal, like something too foreign to be true) over was not a good plan, and then nudged it ahead ever so slightly until he bumped into Poe.

“Hey.” Poe braced a hand on his chair and leaned over him to kiss his forehead. Finn closed his eyes and reached up with his good hand to hold Poe there, just for a moment, and breathed in the smell of sweat and space. “You okay, buddy?”

“The flight was exhausting,” Finn said. He released Poe’s neck, trailing his fingers over Poe’s collarbone as he straightened. “You know if there’s somewhere we can bunk down?”

“Someone will give us a place,” Poe promised. He stepped around to Finn’s side and rested his hand on Finn’s shoulder. From the tiny crease in his forehead, and the force of his hand, Finn bet that Poe knew there was something more complicated going on, but wasn’t pressing it, for which Finn was grateful. “Come on, let’s go find a bed. And a shower. And maybe food.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. He stayed right by Poe’s side as Poe walked into the new Resistance base, carved right into the mountains. As they entered, the weight of the stone pressed in around him, but it was a comforting weight. The mountains felt like they could protect him. Finn swallowed the tears that almost sprang up in his eyes, and leaned into Poe’s touch a little more. Once they were in a private room, he told himself, _then_ he could let go.

* * *

“The _fuck_ ,” Rey announced, striding into central command.

The administrators around Leia stopped talking to look at her. Leia didn’t turn, but Rey could _feel_ the way she bowed her head in the grief and pain swirling around her. It was interesting to know, but Rey didn’t really care.

“Why did you bring him _here_?” Rey demanded.

Leia turned, and said, very quietly, “Please give us the room.”

The other administrators fled, save for Ackbar; he walked out decorously. Just before he closed the door, he sighed, and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Leia.”

The grim smile Leia gave him was answer enough.

Rey paced around the room. It looked almost identical to the one onf D’Qar. If there weren’t meters upon meters of rock pressing into her awareness, and if the air weren’t bright and thin, Rey could almost mistake it for the near-jungle planet. “He’s a murderer! He’s a fucking _asshole_! He kidnapped me! He tortured me! And Poe!”

Leia nodded with every accusation Rey threw at her. With each one, the atmosphere thickened, until the air seemed almost a normal density.

Rey stopped right in front of Leia. She rarely noticed how short the general was, but right then, full of fury, Leia’s solid stance and the sorrow in her eyes made her seem almost small, almost the size she really was instead of larger-than-life.

Rey said, letting the ache inside her wash through every word, “He killed _Han_.”

“Yes,” Leia said. She closed her eyes, and her voice cracked. “He was also, once, my son.”

“And that matters more?” Rey clenched her fists. The room rattled.

“Not more.” Leia sighed, and spread her hands.

The air pressed down on Rey, until the noise stopped, and Rey belatedly realised that she’d been shaking the whole _room_ with her anger. She snarled. She didn’t want to lose control like that.

Leia continued, as if nothing had happened. “He was once my son, and I will give him this last chance.”

Rey looked into Leia’s eyes, into the thunderstorm contained within her soul. The storm was no less than it had ever been; it was sharper, more pointed, wilder than it had been before the First Order had come to D’Qar, but the heart of it, the watching stillness, was still the same.

She nodded, once, sharply. “We’ll talk about this more later,” Rey said, and she wasn’t sure if it was a promise or a threat.

No matter which it was, Leia’s response was an vow: “You will have a hand in his fate.”

Rey paused at the door, and gave Leia a sharp-toothed smile. “Good.”


	11. Chapter 11

The showers in Quaensan Base were sonic, not fluid. On the one hand, Finn appreciated that, because it meant cleaning himself took less time, and he worried less about his chair. On the other hand, he’d gotten used to the fluid showers on D’Qar, and sonic showers reminded him of the First Order.

Finn ended up just showering as quickly as he could, and being very grateful that his legs were still responding to him at all, because it meant he could at least put clean pants on before returning to the bunkroom Poe had declared they were sharing. He didn’t bother with a shirt. Poe wouldn’t care, and he _could_ be shirtless. His diaphragm tightened, and warmth washed over him. One little defiance he could make now. He was broken, yes, and he was not combat-functional, but he was still here, and Poe cared about him — not _for_ him, _about_ him.

“You look happier.” Poe lay on the bunk, stripped down to boxers and an undershirt. He’d showered first, saying that Finn looked like he needed a moment to catch his bearings before doing the same.

Finn stopped his chair next to Poe and locked it in place. “Being clean helps, even if it’s not the same without water.”

Poe laughed. “I’ll make a grounder out of you yet.”

“So long as it’s somewhere with water,” Finn said easily. He braced his arms on the chair and pushed himself upright. His legs cooperated enough so that he didn’t fall into the bunk next to Poe, but it was a practiced control that he was pretty sure looked more graceful and effortless than it felt.

Poe didn’t reach to help him, just shifted aside so that there was more room for him to sit — well, to lean against the wall, really, but that was close enough. Once Finn settled, Poe draped an arm over his legs. “I’m glad you made it out safe,” Poe said quietly. “It took longer than I’d expected for the _Falcon_ to get in the air.”

Finn started fidgeting with Poe’s hair. It was a good texture for it; thick, and just curly enough to bounce if he took locks and straightened them gently before letting go. “General Organa and Skywalker...” His ribcage felt too tight, and he couldn’t move his jaw. Finn closed his eyes and focused on breathing, on the texture of Poe’s hair in his hands, on the weight of Poe’s arm in his lap.

“This is what was bothering you in the hangar,” Poe said, once the silence stretched on enough and it became clear that Finn wasn’t going to finish his sentence.

“Yeah,” Finn managed, because Poe wouldn’t be able to see it if he nodded. “ _He_ was there.”

Poe swallowed, and his hand curled into Finn’s pants. “I thought I saw his shuttle.”’

“They brought him onto the _Falcon_.”

“What.” Poe’s voice had exactly as much inflection as Finn’s. He twisted up, dislodging Finn’s hand, but Finn kept his hand trailing along Poe’s shoulder and back anyway as he met Finn’s gaze. “ _Why_?”

“Fuck if I know.” Finn didn’t snap the words. He wasn’t angry at Poe, wasn’t even _angry_ , really; the burning in his heart was something else, and the restlessness itching along his spine was energy he couldn’t spend in words. “Skywalker said it was ‘expedient’ or something, and then I hid. For the entire flight.”

Poe snuck an arm between the wall and Finn’s neck, so that the weight settled warm and solid, grounding, across Finn’s shoulders. “Stars, Finn, I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes, and leaned in so that their foreheads touched. Finn could feel his breathing, quick and harsh. “He’s here now, I guess?”

“I’ve been trying to not think about that.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

Finn wrapped his arms around Poe, pressing closer until he could feel the thin fabric of Poe’s undershirt against his skin. “I’m not sure they do.”

“Being captured does that to you,” Poe whispered. His mouth was right by Finn’s ear, now. “Just because they caught him doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Just because he’s trapped now doesn’t make it any easier to forget.”

“Yeah.” Finn pressed his face into Poe’s shoulder. It smelled good and safe. “He’s a walking reminder of everything I escaped from.”

“It’s not even something we can fight, if he’s a prisoner.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Finn said. The words were muffled by Poe’s muscle and bone, but the words still felt right in his mouth. He lifted his head, and repeated them. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I get to choose, right?”

Poe nodded, hints of a smile in the corners of his eyes.

“Then I choose not to fight,” Finn said, and he let the words settle around him like armor. “I’ll still help, but I’m not going to be a warrior anymore.”

“Making yourself who you want to be, huh?” Poe pressed a kiss into Finn’s forehead. “Good.”

Finn grinned, and kissed Poe’s lips, and chased his laughter down into the bunk. Maybe the world around them was cold stone right now, but this, right here, was flesh and joy and warmth, and it was good.

* * *

“I want to see him.”

The Rodian guard looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, but orders are—”

“Fuck your orders,” Rey said pleasantly. She bared her teeth in something that she thought might pass for a smile. “I want to see him. Now.”

The Rodian looked at the Nautolan on the other side of the door. The Nautolan shrugged, and said, “If the General says it’s okay?”

Rey nodded and crossed her arms. “I’m sure she’ll say it’s fine.”

The Nautolan pulled out their comlink at the Rodian’s extravagant hand gesture, and said, “So sorry to bother you, Ma’am, but Rey’s asking to see the prisoner.”

Rey didn’t hear the answer, but the Nautolan’s head-tentacles twitched outwards, and the air smelt faintly sour.

The Nautolan replied, quietly, “Yes, Ma’am,” and returned their comlink to their belt. “The General says you’re allowed a brief visit of fifteen minutes, no supervision necessary. She said to say she ‘trusts your discretion’.” They sounded faintly baffled by that.

“Thanks,” Rey said perfunctorily.

She brushed by both guards and opened the door herself. It slid shut behind her as she walked into the corridor, and lights flickered on in front of her. The other end of the hall was sealed by rubble. The room she was looking for was halfway down, where the one closed door lay. The rest were open, showing simple rooms with another door leading out the back, presumably to a privy. None of them had furniture.

Rey stopped at the closed door. The upper half was mostly transparisteel, and through it she could see Kylo Ren, dressed just as she’d last seen him, in heavy black cloth and ragged too-long hair. His skin’s paleness was even more emphasised by the lights.

Before she could say or do anything, he looked up, and grimaced. “Here to stare at me like a caged beast?”

“To convince myself that it’s really you,” Rey snapped. She pressed a fist into the door. “You should be dead.”

“Leia Organa is merciful.” Kylo Ren stood in a fluid flourish of cloth, and paced over to the door. If there weren’t something in the way, she could punch him. She could kill him. Kylo Ren smiled, and it was just as nasty as she remembered. “I’ll need to repay her in kind.”

Rey growled. “She should repay _you_ in kind for Starkiller.”

“Which part?” Kylo Ren looked genuinely curious, and that was the worst.

“ _All of it_ ,” Rey shouted at him. She punched the door, and then left before Kylo Ren could see any of the tears running rage-hot out of her eyes and onto her cheeks.

The guards looked surprised as she stormed past them and out of the base entirely. She needed the sky to clear her head. Also possibly something to fight that wasn’t inanimate, but she wasn’t likely to get that just yet.

Outside of the base, the air bit into her like the desert night, but it was still afternoon by the angle of the sun in the sky. Rey didn’t know what the local day length was. She should learn that. But for now, it mattered more that she was outside, and the sky was light-blue overhead, and she could climb up the mountains just like she used to climb the wrecked starships on Jakku.

The repetitive motions of looking for stable hand- and foot-holds were soothing. She pressed herself against the hard, rough stone, avoiding the local mosses out of habit; she didn’t know if they’d be slick, or possibly just cause a rash. She didn’t have time to look up local flora right then. She’d do that later, when she could _think_ about anything other than the way her muscles strained as she kept going higher and higher, or the way her lungs were pulling every last bit of oxygen they could out of the thin atmosphere.

Finally, she stopped at the base of a spire. There was a mostly-flat place to sit that wasn’t occupied by a local avian’s nest, and where a stubborn plant wasn’t currently rooted. Rey curled up and looked out over the horizon. There was just so _much_ planet, and she could see so far from where she was. The mountains stretched down, gray and foreboding, until they became brownish hills, and then plains that Rey thought were mostly greenish stretched on until the horizon’s jagged mountainous edge.

It was chilly now that she’d stopped moving, and Rey curled around herself, tucking warmth into the flaps of her new jacket and pants. As she went to rest her chin on her knees, the full truth of Kylo Ren being on this planet, in this _base_ , hit her, and instead she tucked her face into her legs, wrapped her arms around her head, and bit back her screams of rage and pain. Tears dropped, salt and wet and warm for the first moments of contact, against her legs, and Rey hated herself for the tears, but she couldn’t stop them, not well-fed and well-watered as she was. She’d lost that control weeks ago.

“He isn’t going to stay here,” Rey promised herself, whispering the words as directly into her heart as she could. “I will have a hand in his fate, and that alone means _he will not stay near me_.”

And, if she could, her hand would be the one that killed him. Unless Leia wanted to do the honors instead, of course; she had more right to it. But Rey smiled, as she contemplated how much easier it would be to be calm and happy again, once the stain on existence called Kylo Ren was gone for good.

She still didn’t climb back down until the sun was setting and the stone began to cool in truth. When she did return, it was with a clearer heart, and to dinner full of pilots telling slowly more exaggerated stories of combat maneuvers, and Rey could, almost, forget he was eating dinner too, less than a kilometer away.

That _almost_ hung in the air until she slept, with Jess curled around her, breathing slow and steady and without any obvious worries in the world.

Rey stared into the darkness, feeling Jess’ chest rise and fall behind her, until her eyes fell closed and she dreamt of light.


	12. Chapter 12

Breakfast was supplemented rations. Rey couldn’t say she blamed the staff; they hadn’t planned for the evacuation to happen quite so suddenly, and the mountains provided less area for gardening than D’Qar’s hills. Still, the atmosphere of the mess hall was the same: a cavernous room with windows along one side providing natural light, and sentients of all species crowded together clamoring for sustenance.

Jess dragged her to where the pilots congregated, while Rey scanned the crowded room for any sign of Poe and Finn. She hadn’t been in a good place, yesterday, to try and find them. To be fair, she was pretty sure they hadn’t been either, since Jess hadn’t said anything about them trying to find her, or even really seeing them at dinner (which Rey had missed while sitting on the peaks).

Rey was halfway through eating her spiced porridge when she saw them. Standing up, she waved at them; unless she wanted everyone’s attention, shouting was pointless in here. But the wave was enough for Poe, at least, to see her, and she caught his grin and Finn’s dawning smile as they turned her way. Rey sat down and said, “Finn and Poe are here.”

“Great,” Jess said. She shoved Vassa, Blue Eight, to the side, saying, “Make space for them.”

The Mon Calamari elbowed her back, but did scootch.

Rey snickered, and moved the lone chair at the end of the table over to a different table. The benches were great for fitting more people in one place, so long as you _could_ sit on them. And Finn could, she was sure, but it was more effort than it was worth.

Poe looked scruffy, and Finn looked exhausted, but neither of them looked injured, and Rey grinned. “It’s good to see you,” she said to Poe as he sat down next to Jess.

“Nice flying out there,” he said. He prodded at the theoretical sausages on his plate. “I’d forgotten what evac rations were like.”

Finn shook his head. “They’re food, stop complaining that they aren’t spiced.” He leaned over to Rey, and mock-whispered in her ear, “He’s been bemoaning the loss of spice-peppers all night.”

Rey tapped her forehead to his shoulder, since it was near enough now. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“The battle was rough.” Finn’s face tightened. “Have you heard—”

“Yeah.” Rey gave up on her food, and took Finn’s hand. Jess and Poe were getting into what she was pretty sure was an intentionally-loud debate about who had done the neatest tricks in the battle, for which she was grateful. “I wish they’d just killed him.”

Finn’s hand tightened on hers, almost enough that she wondered if his grip would bruise. Her hands didn’t take marks like that easily, but Finn was strong. On her arm, she’d be more certain. His voice was eerily steady as he said, “They could have. Or thrown him out of the airlock.”

“She wants to give him another chance, she said.”

“Hasn’t he had enough?” Finn’s fingers loosened a little, just enough so that he could extract it and fold it fully into a fist. “On Starkiller...”

“She wasn’t _there_.” Rey grimaced. She wanted to hit something. Again. Carefully, she laid her hands on the table, staring at her nails. They had oil caught under them, not sand and dust and dirt, because the sonic shower could get pretty much anything else.

“She is your teacher, and our commanding officer.” Finn put his hand over hers. His fingers were always smoother than she expected. Some of that was the bacta, some of that was how he’d worn gloves and armor for years. Some of it, she thought, was that he didn’t pick up a weapon every day, even now, the way she did. “We are supposed to obey.”

Rey barely suppressed a growl. It wouldn’t do to make their conversation any more obvious than necessary to the others in the room. “We don’t _need_ to obey. We swore nothing saying we would.”

Finn’s face went completely blank for a heartbeat, and then twisted up into an expression Rey couldn’t read. There were too many emotions swirling around the mess hall for her to be sure of anything she read, but in his hand she felt confusion, and in his eyes she read wonder, and in his shoulders she saw fear. Finn said, so quietly she could barely hear him, “That is not a path I choose to take.”

Rey nodded. There was a lump in her throat. Around it, and just as softly, she said, “I don’t know if I can.”

“We might not need to.” Finn tugged gently on her hand, until she leaned over properly, and then they were hugging. Rey’s arms wrapped around him, careful on his back and shoulder still, and she buried her face in his neck. His face was pressing against the top of her head, too, and he was warm and solid and safer than anything else she had touched in the last day.

The noise of the mess hall seemed inconsequential compared to the warmth and light of Finn’s body and heart, and Rey breathed in the sureness of spirit that surrounded him. It steadied her, and folded back around both of them as their hearts beat steadily together. Rey wasn’t quite sure what it meant, or how it was helping, but it was, and she could feel Finn’s breath smoothing as they stayed in their embrace with it’s only-slightly-awkward angle.

She pulled away first, gently disentangling herself from Finn’s heart and breath before his body. She opened her eyes, and the noise of the mess hall filtered back in, crashing around her as Poe defended either his own honor or BB-8’s; it was hard to tell when it was something about their flying. Rey met Finn’s eyes, and smiled. “It _will_ work out.” She trailed her hand down his neck, shoulder, arm, letting it rest on his hand, which took hers. “Even if it means going to Leia every day and yelling at her, it will.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Luke Skywalker said.

Rey jumped, and hissed, and the rest of the table quieted.

“What are you doing here?” Rey demanded, glaring at the old man. Luke was wearing his loose-fitting robes over a black uniform of some sort. His beard and hair, though neatly trimmed, still managed to look disheveled. “And how did you sneak up on us?”

“You weren’t paying attention,” Luke said, amused. He smiled at the rest of the pilots. “I’m sure you have catching up to do. I just came by to let you know that Leia and I would like to talk to Rey and Finn once they finish eating.”

Rey scowled at him. Finn said, “Thank you for the message. Where should we find you?”

“Command.” Luke met Rey’s eyes. “I’m told you know where that is already.”

“Yes.” Rey turned back to her food and pointedly stabbed her spoon into her porridge. “See you soon.”

“Don’t choke,” Luke advised.

Rey knew he left because the other people sitting at the table started talking again. She ignored them, eating in silence. Beside her, Finn did the same. Rey could feel the concerned looks that Poe and Jess were giving both of them, but neither of them asked. She’d need to thank them for it, later; Poe especially, since he had as much direct reason to be angry as either her or Finn, and he wasn’t getting to be part of whatever conversation Leia and Luke wanted to have.

She took Finn’s dish and utensils back to the kitchen for him, saying she’d meet him outside the mess hall. They got there at almost the same time, because walking through the hall was much simpler than moving through it with a chair, even as good as Finn was at using the chair’s controls. Outside, in the silence, Rey took Finn’s hand.

“You think you know something,” he said.

Rey rubbed her thumb on his, and started pacing down the halls. Finn stayed at her side. After two turnings, she said, “Yesterday I made Leia let me see him.”

“Stars, Rey, _why_?” Finn’s horror wafted through her body and wove through his voice.

“I had to know.” Her fingers were tight on his hand. He didn’t complain. “I had to see him to make it real and not a nightmare.”

Finn didn’t say anything else until they were at the door to central command. He stopped her before they entered, and met her eyes, and said, “It isn’t better this way.”

“No,” Rey said, “but I can fight a person more easily than a dream.”

Finn almost smiled, at that, and then they entered the command room.

Nobody else was in there except for Leia and Luke, shining in the Force like twin suns. They were also pointedly ignoring each other, as Rey and Finn entered, from how they were sitting on opposite sides of the room, working on consoles doing _something_ or other. Really, Rey was surprised that Leia had managed to clear everyone out preemptively, when this meeting wasn’t scheduled beyond ‘when you finish eating’.

Leia rose as the door shut behind them. “I’m sure you have questions for us.” She sounded tired, and Rey looked more closely at her face. The lines always on her face were drawn deeper, and shadows darkened her eyes; not soul-shadows, but ones born of troubled or sleepless nights.

“I already asked you why,” Rey said. She turned to Luke, who had yet to rise from his chair, though he was now facing them. “What about you? Why is he alive? Why is he _here_?”

Luke sighed. His hair was neatly tucked back from his face, and he looked like he’d slept no better than Leia. “He once was my greatest student.”

“He isn’t, now.” Finn said it with finality that almost echoed through the room, quiet as it was with the hum of electronics and the soft sounds of breathing.

“No,” Luke said. He lifted his eyes. Rey stared into them, sky-blue and sky-deep and sorrowing. “He cut that part of himself away long ago.”

“Han called him Ben,” Rey said. She leaned into Finn, solid and steady in his chair.

Leia said, “His name was Benyamin Bail Solo Organa.” She closed her eyes. “Ben Organa. He was quiet, thoughtful, and studious. He did not laugh often, but his smile could cheer anyone.”

“He was thirteen when he became my student.” Luke stood and walked, slowly, over to Leia. “He was sixteen when he destroyed the training facility and everyone who studied there.” He rested his hand on Leia’s shoulder, and the sorrow in the room was so cloying Rey felt like she was going to choke. “He disappeared. I... wandered.”

Finn crossed his arms, and Rey shifted with him. He said, “Why does this matter?” He shook his head, and the cloying atmosphere started dissolving around him. Rey squeezed his shoulder gently in thanks as he continued. “No disrespect to you, Ma’am, but why does it matter who your son was, when it’s clear enough who he is now?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.” Leia rested her hand on Luke’s. “He... made his choice, we all felt it.”

“So why let him live?” Rey tried not to look too accusing as she said, “You could’ve killed him already.”

“We have always lived with hope,” Leia said. She sighed, and some of the steel Rey always associated with her returned to her voice. “He had not seemed so destructive before, and we had hoped that it was simply a matter of overcoming influence. Now...”

“Now,” Luke finished, “we know that regardless of whether the initial destruction was forced, influenced, or chosen, he has taken it into himself. If he realises the wrongness of his action, perhaps he could be saved.”

Rey laughed, and the sound soard bird-bright over the sorrow souring the room. “He won’t.”

“I wish to give him a chance.” Leia’s words did echo, not in Rey’s ears but in her head. “He will have one week to choose who he is: Ben Organa, who did abysmal things for a cause that consumed him, but is willing to work to better himself and the galaxy; or Kylo Ren, who is a murderer and sees nothing wrong with his actions.”

“And at the end of that week?” Finn asked quietly.

Leia closed her eyes. Luke drew her closer, into a loose embrace.

Leia said, “Either Ben Organa will be welcomed back into the remnants of his family.” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Or Kylo Ren will die by my hand.”

Rey nodded. A grin spread over her face, fierce as the stars. “He needs to make the same choice we did.”

“He does,” Luke said. His face remained closed, troubled. “I fear he will once again choose to turn away.”

“Thank you for telling me about this, but it’s his choice.” Finn turned back towards the door and said, over his shoulder. “I already made mine: I am no longer a stormtrooper, and he will no longer be a part of my life.”

Rey let him go. When the door closed again behind him, she said, “You said I would have a hand in his fate.”

Leia smiled, and it matched Rey’s own expression: Fierce and bright and not necessarily kind. “Should you wish it, I will grant you permission to visit him whenever you wish, so long as you promise not to kill him. I would have him live until his judgement day, unless he chooses death by his own hand first.”

Slowly, Rey nodded. The world was still spinning. The sky was bright and vast overhead. She had seen him once and survived, and she could do so again. “I’m not going to try and save him,” she warned Leia.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

Rey stuck out a hand, and Leia shook it. Rey nodded again, sharply, and said, “It’s your judgement to give.”

“And I will give it to him alone.”

From Luke’s face, Rey was sure that Leia hadn’t told him that part of the plan. Rey smirked, and said, letting the Force roll through her like the desert winds, “May the Force be with you.”

Leia laughed. “And, dear child, with you.”

Rey left then, before she could see anything more of the guilt and sorrow on Leia’s face, and the resignation on Luke’s.

Instead, she went to the hangar, put on a flight suit, got into her X-Wing, and flew into the sky until the atmosphere dwindled and there was nothing between her and the stars but the transparisteel cockpit. She set herself into a stable orbit and cut the engines and lights, until there was nothing but the darkness shot through with light and the sound of her own breathing.

She closed her eyes, and opened herself up to the Force, the way Leia had taught her. She could feel the life below her, the warmth and movement of creatures and the quiet stability of plants. Nothing distinguished itself. Everything was much like everything else, woven and coiled into itself until it made a soft tapestry for her to curl up on.

“I will live,” she whispered to the stars. “I will live and I will learn, and I will not become anything like him.”

The stars said nothing, but Rey thought they heard her, as she re-engaged the engines and flew back to Quaensan Base, which was, however improbably, her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a sequel story for this. It is entitled _And The Force Shall Set Us Free_ , and I doubt I'll change the name, since I've been wanting to write that story with that title since I knew the arc of this one. Please subscribe to the series if you'd like to be notified when I post it!


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